Install github release as created by CI

[nbenn]

I'm sorry if I'm missing something here, but wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to directly install packages as prepared for example by travis using something like

deploy:
  provider: releases
  api_key: $GITHUB_TOKEN
  file_glob: true
  file: pkg_name*.t*gz
  skip_cleanup: true
  on:
    tags: true

This would make it possible to distribute binary packages via github, or bundle vignettes without checking them into git, etc.

Currently, remotes::install_github("user/repo@*release") fetches the full source code of the repo for the latest release ref and there seems to be no way of specifying a specific release file to be used instead.

[gaborcsardi]

You don't need remotes for that, you can get the URL of the released file via the GH API (https://developer.github.com/v3/repos/releases/#get-a-single-release), and then just install from the URL with install.packages(url, type = "souce", repos = NULL).

[nbenn]

Sure, but to me there is still some stuff that could be automated by remotes. Something along the lines of

1. get name of latest release

2. list assets of that release

3. if only a single archive

   • try and install that
   • if it fails, fall back to installing source

   else

   • use some file name regexps to auto-determine which release corresponds to current os
   • if nothing matches, fall back to installing source

If you don't think any of this is useful, it's fine, you can go ahead and close the issue.

[gaborcsardi]

I think this makes sense. It is maybe something that pkgman / pkgdepends could support. I am reluctant to add it to remotes, pkgman is much better, and it is coming soon.

[jimhester]

So devtools / remotes does have support for installing the latest release using a somewhat undocumented syntax, my/test/pkg@*release, it was added in ~2014, r-lib/devtools#475

[jimhester]

Oh right, I didn't read, you want a release binary

Currently, remotes::install_github("user/repo@*release") fetches the full source code of the repo for the latest release ref and there seems to be no way of specifying a specific release file to be used instead.

[nbenn]

@jimhester, I think this functionality of devtools you are referring to is already entirely available in remotes. I was proposing to expand this a bit to enable the use of assets associated with a release.

Like so, one could use CI to build packages, github for hosting and remotes::install_github() for installing, thereby emulating the behavior of CRAN/utils::install.packages()