more informative error messages for update_packages()

[dpprdan]

I encountered the following error message from update_packages() today.

library(remotes)
update_packages()
#> Error: HTTP error 422.
#>   No commit found for SHA: patch-1
#> 
#>   Rate limit remaining: 4992/5000
#>   Rate limit reset at: 2018-10-25 17:37:08 UTC
#> 
#> 

I had no idea what (package) might have caused this, but subsequently narrowed it down to a package, which I installed at the time from a now deleted Github branch.

update_packages("remedy")
#> Error: HTTP error 422.
#>   No commit found for SHA: patch-1
#> 
#>   Rate limit remaining: 4991/5000
#>   Rate limit reset at: 2018-10-25 17:37:08 UTC
#> 
#> 

desc::desc(system.file("DESCRIPTION", package = "remedy"))
#> Package: remedy
#> Title: RStudio Addins to Simplify Markdown Writing
#> Version: 0.0.0.9000
#> Authors@R (parsed):
#>     * Colin Fay <colin@thinkr.fr> [aut, cre]
#> Author: Colin Fay [aut, cre]
#> Maintainer: Colin Fay <colin@thinkr.fr>
#> Description: An RStudio addin providing shortcut for writing in Markdown.
#> License: MIT + file LICENSE
#> Imports:
#>     rstudioapi,
#>     stringr
#> Built: R 3.4.1; ; 2017-09-09 12:43:25 UTC; windows
#> Encoding: UTF-8
#> GithubRef: patch-1
#> GithubRepo: remedy
#> GithubSHA1: ab59c3510b64dfc6efe3293bd7d16d8cea69ae46
#> GithubUsername: dpprdan
#> LazyData: true
#> RemoteHost: https://api.github.com
#> RemoteRef: patch-1
#> RemoteRepo: remedy
#> RemoteSha: ab59c3510b64dfc6efe3293bd7d16d8cea69ae46
#> RemoteType: github
#> RemoteUsername: dpprdan
#> RoxygenNote: 6.0.1.9000

Now maybe this particular case is a very rare one but nevertheless I think it might be helpful to get more informative (error) messages if update_packages() fails (e.g. which package caused the error), so the user knows better, where to look.

Session info

devtools::session_info()
#> - Session info ----------------------------------------------------------
#>  setting  value                       
#>  version  R version 3.5.1 (2018-07-02)
#>  os       Windows 10 x64              
#>  system   x86_64, mingw32             
#>  ui       RTerm                       
#>  language EN                          
#>  collate  German_Germany.1252         
#>  ctype    German_Germany.1252         
#>  tz       Europe/Berlin               
#>  date     2018-10-25                  
#> 
#> - Packages --------------------------------------------------------------
#>  package     * version date       lib source        
#>  assertthat    0.2.0   2017-04-11 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  backports     1.1.2   2017-12-13 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.0)
#>  base64enc     0.1-3   2015-07-28 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.0)
#>  callr         3.0.0   2018-08-24 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  cli           1.0.1   2018-09-25 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  crayon        1.3.4   2017-09-16 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  curl          3.2     2018-03-28 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  debugme       1.1.0   2017-10-22 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  desc          1.2.0   2018-05-01 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  devtools      2.0.0   2018-10-19 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  digest        0.6.18  2018-10-10 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  evaluate      0.12    2018-10-09 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  fs            1.2.6   2018-08-23 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  glue          1.3.0   2018-07-17 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  htmltools     0.3.6   2017-04-28 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  knitr         1.20    2018-02-20 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  magrittr      1.5     2014-11-22 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  memoise       1.1.0   2017-04-21 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  pkgbuild      1.0.2   2018-10-16 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  pkgload       1.0.1   2018-10-11 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  prettyunits   1.0.2   2015-07-13 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  processx      3.2.0   2018-08-16 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  ps            1.2.0   2018-10-16 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  R6            2.3.0   2018-10-04 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  Rcpp          0.12.19 2018-10-01 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  remotes     * 2.0.1   2018-10-19 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  rlang         0.3.0.1 2018-10-25 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  rmarkdown     1.10    2018-06-11 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  rprojroot     1.3-2   2018-01-03 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  sessioninfo   1.1.0   2018-09-25 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  stringi       1.2.4   2018-07-20 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  stringr       1.3.1   2018-05-10 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  testthat      2.0.1   2018-10-13 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  usethis       1.4.0   2018-08-14 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  withr         2.1.2   2018-03-15 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#>  yaml          2.2.0   2018-07-25 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)
#> 
#> [1] D:/Users/Daniel/Documents/R/win-library/3.5
#> [2] C:/Program Files/R/R-3.5.1/library

[infotroph]

+1. Just encountered this in the even less informative case where I hadn't yet installed from the bad remote, so I didn't even have a sha to work from. To reproduce:

totally_a_package <- tempfile()
dir.create(totally_a_package)
write.dcf(
    list(Imports = "remotes, fakePkg", Remotes = "r-lib/remotes, infotroph/faekPgk"),
    file.path(totally_a_package, "DESCRIPTION"))
remotes::install_deps(totally_a_package)

Result:

Error: HTTP error 404.
  Not Found

  Rate limit remaining: 59/60
  Rate limit reset at: 2018-11-01 02:10:30 UTC

[dpprdan]

Yet another 🤦‍♂️ that could potentially use a better error message.

remotes::update_packages("remedy")
#> Skipping 1 packages not available: remedy

Huh? But I know that {remedy} is installed.

sessioninfo::package_info("remedy")
#>  package    * version    date       lib source                           
#>  assertthat   0.2.0      2017-04-11 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)                   
#>  cli          1.0.1      2018-09-25 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)                   
#>  crayon       1.3.4      2017-09-16 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)                   
#>  evaluate     0.12       2018-10-09 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)                   
#>  fansi        0.4.0      2018-10-05 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)                   
#>  glue         1.3.0      2018-07-17 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)                   
#>  highr        0.7        2018-06-09 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)                   
#>  jsonlite     1.5        2017-06-01 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)                   
#>  knitr        1.20       2018-02-20 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)                   
#>  magrittr     1.5        2014-11-22 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)                   
#>  markdown     0.8        2017-04-20 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)                   
#>  mime         0.6        2018-10-05 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)                   
#>  pillar       1.3.0.9000 2018-08-16 [1] Github (hadley/colformat@3fabb4e)
#>  rematch2     2.0.1      2017-06-20 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)                   
#>  remedy       0.0.0.9800 2018-09-17 [1] local                            
#>  rlang        0.3.0.1    2018-10-25 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)                   
#>  rstudioapi   0.8        2018-10-02 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)                   
#>  stringi      1.2.4      2018-07-20 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)                   
#>  stringr      1.3.1      2018-05-10 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)                   
#>  tibble       1.4.2      2018-01-22 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)                   
#>  utf8         1.1.4      2018-05-24 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)                   
#>  yaml         2.2.0      2018-07-25 [1] CRAN (R 3.5.1)                   
#> 
#> [1] C:/Users/daniel/Documents/.R/win-library
#> [2] C:/Program Files/R/R-3.5.1/library

Oh, so apparently I installed it from my local repo.

[gaborcsardi]

@dpprdan that's not an error message, it is just a message.

[dpprdan]

@gaborcsardi True, I've updated my post.

[japilo]

I am getting the same error message, in my case for the package ggmap.

Downloading GitHub repo dkahle/ggmap@master
Error: HTTP error 422.
  No commit found for SHA: rc-0.3.1

  Rate limit remaining: 4973/5000
  Rate limit reset at: 2019-01-24 12:23:35 UTC

[artemklevtsov]

There is issue for this: #274

[prosoitos]

Had the same problem for the package nlmr:

Error: HTTP error 422.
  No commit found for SHA: develop

  Rate limit remaining: 4891/5000
  Rate limit reset at: 2019-06-20 04:45:50 UTC

Since it was my very first time using remotes::update_packages() and since I had left a lot of my packages installed from GitHub get out of date, it took a while to narrow it down.

Side note: this is a really great function. Thank you!

[prosoitos]

While trying to narrow it down, I also noticed that update_packages() seems to accept vectors only up to a certain length (maybe about 150 elements, maybe a little more). For longer vectors, even without missing any parenthesis, R would not run as show + on the next line as if the function was incomplete (I did try it several times and made really sure that I was not missing a closing parenthesis).

[prosoitos]

Oh, this is great! Thank you @jimhester for the change!