Windows 10: unable to access index for repository about drat HOT 14 CLOSED

Closing this is OK. It answers this one question: can drat be used to build a repository that can be given as Additional_repositories in package DESCRIPTION. The answer is "NO".

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How did you documented to install the package from your drat?
Did it make difference if user uses https or http?
I recall that install.packages(method="curl") sometimes helped on such error.
I used drat, tools::write_PACKAGES, and Additional_repository field and never had problem that I couldn't fix, so forgetting drat (or tools::write_PACKAGES essentially) shouldn't be necessary.

from drat.

@jarioksa the answer is yes, try

Additional_repositories: https://jarioksa.github.io/drat

from drat.

curl should be baked into more recent R versions.

from drat.

Windows definitely works. I have setup a number of drat repos for different projects and have at times clearly provided Windows binaries that way.

I guess you "just" have to debug exactly what the structure is that Windows expects. drat itself has no opinion in the matter -- it just helps you. It calls the underlying base R function write_PACKAGES() for you and helps with a few other things.

One thing to check is that basic drat operations are for source *.tar.gz packages, Windows expects binaries in *zip format unless told to look at sources. You need to take care of those details and e.g. have appropriate binaries built. Or tell users to use sources.

from drat.

I did not document that install by any means, except

• People install another package with devtools::install_github
• and that another package has Additional_repositories directive in DESCRIPTION pointing to drat.

The failure comes from that Additional_repositories because it emerged even when people did not need to use that drat repository.

I had hoped that this was invisible magic for users. It was, but visible & black magic.

from drat.

I think you fundamentally misunderstand something.

Let's get back to the Alice and Bob example.

Alice is a package author. She writes packages. Some on CRAN, some elsewhere. She hosts some packages on GitHub, and may be a drat user to make maintaining that R-compatible repo trivially easy.

Bob uses some of Alice's packages. He may never have heard of drat nor used it. But he uses R, and download.packages(), however invoked, may get him packages that are hosted somewhere with the help of drat.

Hope this helps. You users do not need to know drat.

As I see no actionable item here, shall we close this?

from drat.

Come on @jarioksa there is an entire paper on the topic for the special case of a data package repository (but that is still a package repository) -- maybe you could read that?

https://journal.r-project.org/archive/2017/RJ-2017-026/index.html

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Another working example: https://github.com/jangorecki/big.data.table/blob/master/DESCRIPTION
Lookup .gitlab-ci.yml for usage when installing. Although I haven't used with devtools::install_github but utils::install.packages.

from drat.

install_github() is fundamentally different as it takes a source repo -- I have argued for years that that is potentially bad idea, however common the use is -- whereas the approach heres supports R packages. drat allows you to extend operations you would otherwise do with officials repos like CRAN or BioC in a self-controlled repo, and Additional_repositories: is the hook R allows for automagically pull it packages from a Suggests:.

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Note that Additional_repositories is currently used only for package check (see WRE). If you want to use that information for automatic dependency resolution you have to code that. I submit proposal to base R to provide such information to user https://github.com/wch/r-source/compare/tools4pkgs#diff-c610281df0839138574292846834cbc5R447-R461
but it wasn't merged.

from drat.

Thanks for these. I try to follow these guidelines. I cannot test them myself because everything worked for me all the time: it were the users that ran into trouble and reported their failures. I'll wait for their reports of success (I hope).

from drat.

@jarioksa Sounds good. All this can indeed be a little tricky -- it helps to step back. Deep down what we do here uses base R unaltered so everything replies on plain R operations with repos. We "just" plug into the one or two interfaces we can play with:

• explicitly listing repositories (as CRAN alternatives, say, or local repos, or ...)
• allow CRAN packages to have external Suggests: via Additional_repositories:.

No more, no less. You can maybe work out what it is that you want to do, what is missing currently and if and how drat can help (as it has for dozens and dozens of projects). Good luck.

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@eddelbuettel I was not shouting "BUG!", and my intention was not suggest there was something wrong in drat. I assumed all the time that either I was missing something or that there are some strange interactions or assumptions buried in devtools or Windows 10, but I wished somebody would know and lead me to the light. Thanks.

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