ctv-client: CRAN Task Views: Installing/Updating/Downloading Packages

Description

Client-side tools for installing CRAN task views.

Usage

ctv(view, repos = NULL, ...)
available.views(repos = NULL, ...)
install.views(views, coreOnly = FALSE, repos = NULL, ...)
update.views(views, coreOnly = FALSE, repos = NULL, lib.loc = NULL, filters = NULL, ...)
download.views(views, destdir, coreOnly = FALSE, repos = NULL, ...)
# S3 method for ctv
print(x, packagelist = TRUE, ...)
# S3 method for ctvlist
print(x, packagelist = FALSE, ...)

Value

available.views returns an object of class "ctvlist" of the available task views whose elements are of class "ctv".

install.views and update.views have no return value.

Arguments

view, views: character vector with the short names of the task views whose associated packages should be downloaded and installed. Alternatively, views can also be an object of class "ctvlist" (as returned by available.views) or an object of class "ctv" (i.e., an element of a "ctvlist").
coreOnly: logical. Should all packages or only core packages be installed? (recycled to the same length as views)
repos: character, the base URL of the repository. By default getOption("repos") is tried and otherwise getOption("CRAN") is used.
lib.loc: character vector describing the location of R library trees to search through (and update packages therein).
filters: a character vector or list to filter available.packages, e.g., for filtering with respect to operating system type or free and open-source software license.
destdir: directory where downloaded packages are to be stored.
...: further arguments passed to install.packages or download.packages respectively.
x: an object of class "ctv" or "ctvlist" respectively.
packagelist: logical. Should the packagelist also be printed?

Details

install.views queries the file Views.rds located at the src/contrib directory of repos and then simply calls install.packages to install the packages associated with the view specified. For each view it can be specified whether all packages or only the core packages should be installed.

available.views returns the list of task views currently available in the file Views.rds. In earlier versions, this was called CRAN.views (which still works and provides the same functionality).

update.views queries which packages from a view are not yet installed (using installed.packages) and which of the installed packages are older than the packages available (using available.packages). It subsequently installs only the packages that are not current or not installed yet.

download.views works exactly as install.views except that it calls download.packages instead of install.packages.

For a more detailed description of the arguments see also install.packages.

Examples

Run this code

if (FALSE) {
## query only a single view (with known name)
ctv("Econometrics")

## extract corresponding citation
ctv("Econometrics")$citation

## query list of CRAN task views available
available.views()

## install Econometrics view
install.views("Econometrics")
## only with core packages
install.views("Econometrics", coreOnly = TRUE)

## update Econometrics view (i.e. only packages that are not current anyway)
update.views("Econometrics")
}