update.packages            package:utils            R Documentation

_D_o_w_n_l_o_a_d _P_a_c_k_a_g_e_s _f_r_o_m _C_R_A_N-_l_i_k_e _r_e_p_o_s_i_t_o_r_i_e_s

_D_e_s_c_r_i_p_t_i_o_n:

     These functions can be used to automatically compare the version
     numbers of installed packages with the newest available version on
     the repositories and update outdated packages on the fly.

_U_s_a_g_e:

     update.packages(lib.loc = NULL, repos = CRAN,
                     contriburl = contrib.url(repos, type),
                     CRAN = getOption("repos"),
                     method, instlib = NULL,
                     ask = TRUE, available = NULL, destdir = NULL,
                     installWithVers = FALSE, checkBuilt = FALSE,
                     type = getOption("pkgType"))

     available.packages(contriburl = contrib.url(getOption("repos")), method)

     CRAN.packages(CRAN = getOption("repos"), method,
                   contriburl = contrib.url(CRAN))

     old.packages(lib.loc = NULL, repos = CRAN,
                  contriburl = contrib.url(repos),
                  CRAN = getOption("repos"),
                  method, available = NULL, checkBuilt = FALSE)

     new.packages(lib.loc = NULL, repos = CRAN,
                  contriburl = contrib.url(repos),
                  CRAN = getOption("repos"),
                  method, available = NULL, ask = FALSE)

     download.packages(pkgs, destdir, available = NULL,
                       repos = CRAN,
                       contriburl = contrib.url(repos, type),
                       CRAN = getOption("repos"), method,
                       type = getOption("pkgType"))

     install.packages(pkgs, lib, repos = CRAN,
                      contriburl = contrib.url(repos, type),
                      CRAN = getOption("repos"),
                      method, available = NULL, destdir = NULL,
                      installWithVers = FALSE, dependencies = FALSE,
                      type = getOption("pkgType"))

     contrib.url(repos, type = getOption("pkgType"))

_A_r_g_u_m_e_n_t_s:

 lib.loc: character vector describing the location of R library trees
          to search through (and update packages therein).

   repos: character vector, the base URL(s) of the repositories to use,
          i.e., the URL of the CRAN master such as
          '"http://cran.r-project.org"' or its Statlib mirror,
          '"http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/R/CRAN"'. Can be 'NULL' to install
          from local '.tar.gz' files. 

contriburl: URL(s) of the contrib section of the repositories. Use this
          argument only if your CRAN mirror is incomplete, e.g.,
          because you burned only the 'contrib' section on a CD. 
          Overrides argument 'repos'. Can be 'NULL' to install from
          local '.tar.gz' files. 

    CRAN: character, an earlier way to specify 'repos'.

  method: Download method, see 'download.file'.

    pkgs: character vector of the short names of packages/bundles whose
          current versions should be downloaded from 'CRAN'. If 'repos
          = NULL', a character vector of file paths of '.tar.gz' files.
           These can be source archives or binary package/bundle
          archive files (as created by 'R CMD build --binary'). If this
          is a zero-length character vector, a listbox of available
          packages (including those contained in bundles) is presented
          where possible. 

 destdir: directory where downloaded packages are stored.

available: an object listing packages available at the repositories as
          returned by 'CRAN.packages'.

     lib: character vector giving the library directories where to
          install the packages.  Recycled as needed.

     ask: logical indicating whether to ask user before packages are
          actually downloaded and installed, or the character string
          '"graphics"', which brings up a widget to allow the user to
          (de-)select from the list of packages which could be updated.
           The latter only works on systems with a GUI version of
          'select.list', and is otherwise equivalent to 'ask = TRUE'. 

installWithVers: If 'TRUE', will invoke the install of the package such
          that it can be referenced by package version.

checkBuilt: If 'TRUE', a package built under an earlier minor version
          of R is considered to be 'old'.

 instlib: character string giving the library directory where to
          install the packages.

dependencies: logical indicating to also install uninstalled packages
          on which these packages depend/suggest/import (and so on
          recursively).  Not used if 'repos = NULL'. Can also be a
          character vector, a subset of 'c("Depends", "Imports",
          "Suggests")'. 

    type: character, indicating the type of package to download and
          install. Possible values are '"source"' (the default except
          under the CRAN Mac OS X build), '"mac.binary"' and
          '"win.binary"' (which can be downloaded but not installed). 

_D_e_t_a_i_l_s:

     All of these functions work with the names of a package or bundle
     (and not the component packages of a bundle, except for
     'install.packages' if the repository provides the necessary
     information).

     'CRAN.packages' returns a matrix of details corresponding to
     packages/bundles currently available in the 'contrib' section of
     CRAN, the comprehensive R archive network.  The current list of
     packages is downloaded over the internet (or copied from a local
     CRAN mirror).  'available.packages' does the same for one or more
     repositories with a similar structure.  Both return only packages
     whose version requirements are met by the running version of R.

     'old.packages' compares the information from 'available.packages'
     with that from 'installed.packages' and reports installed
     packages/bundles that have newer versions on the repositories or,
     if 'checkBuilt = TRUE', that were built under an earlier minor
     version of R (for example built under 2.0.x when running R 2.1.1).

     'new.packages' does the same comparison but reports uninstalled
     packages/bundles that are available at the repositories.  It will
     also give warnings about incompletely installed bundles (provided
     the information is available) and bundles whose contents has
     changed. If 'ask != FALSE' it asks which packages should be
     installed in the first element of 'lib.loc'.

     'download.packages' takes a list of package/bundle names and a
     destination directory, downloads the newest versions and saves
     them in 'destdir'.  If the list of available packages is not given
     as argument, it is obtained from repositories.  If a repository is
     local, i.e., the URL starts with '"file:"', then the packages are
     not downloaded but used directly.  (Both '"file:"' and '"file://"'
     are allowed as prefixes to a file path.)

     The main function of the set is 'update.packages'.  First a list
     of all packages/bundles found in 'lib.loc' is created and compared
     with those available at the repostories.  If 'ask = TRUE' (the
     default) packages/bundles with a newer version are reported and
     for each one the user can specify if it should be updated. If so,
     the package sources are downloaded from the repositories and
     installed in the respective library path (or 'instlib' if
     specified) using the R 'INSTALL' mechanism.

     'install.packages' can be used to install new packages/bundles. It
     takes a vector of names and a destination library, downloads the
     packages from the repositories and installs them.  (If the library
     is omitted it defaults to the first directory in '.libPaths()',
     with a warning if there is more than one.) An attempt is made to
     install the packages in an order that respects their dependencies.
      This does assume that all the entries in 'lib' are on the default
     library path for installs (set by 'R_LIBS'). 

     'contrib.url' adds the appropriate type-specific path within a
     repository to each URL in 'repos'.

     For 'install.packages' and 'update.packages', 'destdir' is the
     directory to which packages will be downloaded.  If it is 'NULL'
     (the default) a directory 'downloaded_packages' of the session
     temporary directory will be used (and the files will be deleted at
     the end of the session).

     If 'repos' or 'contriburl' is a vector of length greater than one,
     the newest version of the package is fetched from the first
     repository on the list within which it is found.

_V_a_l_u_e:

     For 'CRAN.packages' and 'available.packages', a matrix with one
     row per package/bundle, row names the package names and column
     names '"Package"', '"Version"', '"Priority"', '"Bundle"',
     '"Depends"', '"Imports"', '"Suggests"' '"Contains"' and
     '"Repository"'.

     For 'old.packages', 'NULL' or a matrix with one row per
     package/bundle, row names the package names and column names
     '"Package"', '"LibPath"', '"Installed"' (the version), '"Built"'
     (the version built under), '"ReposVer"' and '"Repository"'.

     For 'new.packages' a character vector of package/bundle names.

     For 'download.packages', a two-column matrix of names and
     destination file names, for those packages/bundles successfully
     downloaded.

     'install.packages' and 'update.packages' have no return value.

_W_a_r_n_i_n_g:

     Not enough information is recorded to know if a bundle is
     completely installed, so a bundle is regarded as installed if any
     of its component packages is.

_N_o_t_e:

     Some binary distributions of R have 'INSTALL' in a separate
     bundle, e.g. an 'R-devel' RPM.  'install.packages' will give an
     error if called on such a system.

_S_e_e _A_l_s_o:

     'installed.packages'.

     See 'download.file' for how to handle proxies and other options to
     monitor file transfers.

     'INSTALL', 'REMOVE', 'library', '.packages', 'read.dcf'

