Error: Does not appear to be an R package (no DESCRIPTION)

[jeroen]

When calling install_deps() and one of the dependencies already has a dev version installed, we regularly this error:

remotes::install_deps(dependencies = TRUE, upgrade = TRUE)

Looks like the DESCRIPTION file of the installed dependency package contains this:

Maintainer: Jeroen Ooms <jeroen@berkeley.edu>
RemoteType: local
RemoteUrl:
        /private/var/folders/hp/fg4q7m353d91v9mgm4d1stvh0000gn/T/RtmpJkrZ7F/magick_2.0.9000.tar.gz
Built: R 3.6.0; x86_64-apple-darwin15.6.0; 2019-05-20 22:00:37 UTC; unix

I'm not sure how that RemoteUrl got in there but that file no longer exists.

[gaborcsardi]

This is probably an issue with tar: #282

[jeroen]

I don't think this is the problem.

I think the issue is that when remotes::install_local() installs a source package tar.gz, it records the source package file as the RemoteUrl in the installed DESCRIPTION. However that source package might no longer be available when remotes tries to upgrade the package later on.

[gaborcsardi]

Oh, OK. Yes, that should tryCatch() I guess.