Error while trying to install polars from the 2025-09-15 production multiverse

[andres-ixpantia]

Installing package into ‘/Users/andres/Library/R/arm64/4.5/library’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
trying URL 'https://production.r-multiverse.org/2025-09-15/bin/macosx/big-sur-arm64/contrib/4.5/sha256-9d566eaf22e782c32d49cb99a720d52543249d6f1cfa456a9be710c6f09b457f'
Error in download.file(urls, destfiles, "libcurl", mode = "wb", ...) :
  cannot open URL 'https://production.r-multiverse.org/2025-09-15/bin/macosx/big-sur-arm64/contrib/4.5/sha256-9d566eaf22e782c32d49cb99a720d52543249d6f1cfa456a9be710c6f09b457f'
In addition: Warning message:
In download.file(urls, destfiles, "libcurl", mode = "wb", ...) :
  cannot open URL 'https://production.r-multiverse.org/2025-09-15/bin/macosx/big-sur-arm64/contrib/4.5/sha256-9d566eaf22e782c32d49cb99a720d52543249d6f1cfa456a9be710c6f09b457f': HTTP status was '404 Not Found'
Warning in download.packages(pkgs, destdir = tmpd, available = available,  :
  download of package ‘polars’ failed

I'm getting a 404 error when trying to download any package from the production R-multiverse.

[wlandau]

@jeroen, did R-universe change how it stores package files?

For R-multiverse, the Production R2 stores packages by package name and version:

But it looks like the PACKAGES file copied from R-universe has a special File: field. Here's the entry from src/contrib/PACKAGES:

Package: polars
Version: 1.2.0
NeedsCompilation: yes
Filesize: 2152055
SHA256:
        8143c00a1845252de3ffdba9d44b492861a73afc94c8a24d1622d6007fce02b2
Depends: R (>= 4.3)
Imports: rlang (>= 1.1.0)
Suggests: arrow, bit64, blob, carrier (>= 0.2.0), cli, clock, curl,
        data.table, ggplot2, hms, jsonlite, knitr, mirai (>= 2.3.0),
        nanoarrow (>= 0.6.0), nycflights13, patrick (>= 0.3.0), pillar,
        pkgload, purrr (>= 1.1.0), rmarkdown, testthat (>= 3.0.0),
        tibble (>= 3.3.0), vctrs, withr
File:
        sha256-8143c00a1845252de3ffdba9d44b492861a73afc94c8a24d1622d6007fce02b2

Removing the File: field from the server didn't work, so I restored the original.

Going forward, which package files should we copy from https://staging.r-multiverse.org when we build Production snapshots?

[wlandau]

The original system for production snapshots was working earlier this year, and the snapshots from February and March are fine. June and September are broken though.

[wlandau]

I reproduced the issue using a local package server:

install.packages("autometric", repos = "file:///Users/me/Desktop/my_local_package_server", type = "source")

Removing the File: from src/contrib/PACKAGES allowed the package to install. So it should work for R-multiverse. And it's a simple fix.

[wlandau]

I manually removed the File: fields from all the PACKAGES and PACKAGES.gz, and I purged the Cloudflare cache of r-multiverse.org, so downloads from all the current snapshots should work now. I'll just need to update multiverse.internals accordingly.