Breaking Changes

install_github()'s previously deprecated username argument has been removed. (#142)

Development

install_() functions now pass arguments, including authentication information and upgrade down to dependencies (#53, #86, #87).
install_() functions now return the name of the package(s) which were installed (#55).
Dependency parsing is now more robust to whitespace around the dependency specifications (#73).
install_() functions now download tarballs (.tar.gz) files rather than zip archives (.zip). This results in generally smaller files and avoids issues with script permissions being lost and strange behavior of some external unzip programs on Windows (#96).
Do not include the BioCextra repository in versions after it was deprecated (R 3.5+, Bioc 3.6+).
remote_package_name.github_remote and remote_sha.github_remote will lookup package name locally if possible and use faster REST APIs if the curl package is installed. This makes the remote lookup about 10x faster when the remote package has not changed since the last install.
Submodules are now installed if they exist and a git client is available (#138, #133, #103, #82).
remotes now always uses https URLs for R versions that support them (@ankane, #139)
install_gitlab() and install_bioc() remote types added (#135)
Code in remotes now uses the same SHA updating logic for remotes as devtools, including checking if the SHA of the remote has changed since the last installation. (#135)

Accept HTTPS, SSH, or various browser URLs in GitHub repo specification, @jennybc, #90, #109, #112

URL encode GitHub references, to allow installing from non-alphanumeric branch or tags, @krlmlr #38
Better cooperation with proxy servers, and better download method selection on Windows, @cderv, #45, #46
install_deps() supports tar balls, #47
Allow training slash in GitHub repo specification, #54
Work around on some Linux systems, where unzip is set to the empty string, @HenrikBengtsson, #57
Check for circular dependencies while installing, #31
Updated BioConductor repo URLs for newer BioC versions

First public release.