Retrieve packages

Source: R/retrieve.R

Retrieve (download) one or more packages from external sources. Using renv::retrieve() can be useful in CI / CD workflows, where you might want to download all packages listed in a lockfile before later invoking restore(). Packages will be downloaded to an internal path within renv's local state directories – see paths for more details.

retrieve(packages = NULL, ..., lockfile = NULL, destdir = NULL, project = NULL)

Arguments

packages

Either NULL (the default) to install all packages required by the project, or a character vector of packages to install. renv supports a subset of the remotes syntax used for package installation, e.g:

  • pkg: install latest version of pkg from CRAN.

  • pkg@version: install specified version of pkg from CRAN.

  • username/repo: install package from GitHub

  • bioc::pkg: install pkg from Bioconductor.

See https://remotes.r-lib.org/articles/dependencies.html and the examples below for more details.

renv deviates from the remotes spec in one important way: subdirectories are separated from the main repository specification with a :, not /. So to install from the subdir subdirectory of GitHub package username/repo you'd use "username/repo:subdir.

...

Unused arguments, reserved for future expansion. If any arguments are matched to ..., renv will signal an error.

lockfile

The path to an renv lockfile. When set, renv will retrieve the packages as defined within that lockfile. If packages is also non-NULL, then only those packages will be retrieved.

destdir

The directory where packages should be downloaded. When NULL (the default), the default internal storage locations (normally used by e.g. install() or restore()) will be used.

project

The project directory. If NULL, then the active project will be used. If no project is currently active, then the current working directory is used instead.

Value

A named vector, mapping package names to the paths where those packages were downloaded.

Details

If destdir is NULL and the requested package is already available within the renv cache, renv will return the path to that package directory in the cache.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{

# retrieve package + versions as defined in the lockfile
# normally used as a pre-flight step to renv::restore()
renv::retrieve()

# download one or more packages locally
renv::retrieve("rlang", destdir = ".")

} # }