WISH: install_*() to return name of package installed

[HenrikBengtsson]

Not all GitHub repositories are named the same way as the R package they install, e.g.

> res <- remotes::install_github("satijalab/seurat")
Using github PAT from envvar GITHUB_PAT
Downloading GitHub repo satijalab/seurat@master
Installing package into '/home/hb/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.3'
(as 'lib' is unspecified)
* installing *source* package ‘Seurat’ ...
** libs
[...]
*** installing help indices
** building package indices
** testing if installed package can be loaded
* DONE (Seurat)

> res
[1] TRUE

Note, this installs package Seurat (capitalized).

Would it make sense to have the function return the name of the package installed instead of TRUE? (Not sure if remotes ever knows about the package name or not).

Also, and just guessing, but I don't think you can ever get anything else than TRUE returned. For instance, if the repos doesn't exist, you get an error:

> res <- remotes::install_github("satijalab/non_existing_repos")
Using github PAT from envvar GITHUB_PAT
Downloading GitHub repo satijalab/non_existing_repos@master
Error in utils::download.file(url, path, method = download_method(), quiet = quiet,  : 
  cannot download all files

[gaborcsardi]

👍

Great idea! I think it should (ideally) even return some more elaborate structure that includes what exactly happened during install.

But the thing is, we will rewrite the dependency resolution and package download process (hopefully) soon, so I will not add this feature now.

[jeroen]

@gaborcsardi @HenrikBengtsson what would be a temporary workaround that gives me the name of the package installed by install_github() with the current version of devtools / remotes ?

[gaborcsardi]

I am afraid that you need to download it:

p <- devtools:::github_remote("wesm/feather/R")
pkg <- devtools:::remote_download(p)

and then unzip DESCRIPTION and look inside with desc or read.dcf.

[jeroen]

Can I feed pkg back to install to avoid downloading twice?

[gaborcsardi]

Probably, I don't know.

…

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