Query and Install Specific Versions of Packages on CRAN.

versions

versions installs specified versions of R packages hosted on CRAN and provides functions to list available versions and the versions of currently installed packages. These tools can be used to help make R projects and packages more reproducible. versions fits in the narrow gap between the devtoolsinstall_version function and the checkpoint package, using Revolution Analytics' MRAN snapshot server.

usage

You can list the versions of a package that have been on CRAN, when they were added and whether they are available for versions to install.

available.versions(c('checkpoint', 'devtools'))

$checkpoint
  version       date available
1  0.3.15 2015-09-15      TRUE
2  0.3.10 2015-04-27      TRUE
3   0.3.9 2015-03-17      TRUE
4   0.3.3 2014-10-10      TRUE
5   0.3.2 2014-10-01      TRUE

$devtools
   version       date available
1    1.9.1 2015-09-11      TRUE
2    1.8.0 2015-05-09      TRUE
3    1.7.0 2015-01-17      TRUE
4    1.6.1 2014-10-07      TRUE
5      1.6 2014-09-23      TRUE
6      1.5 2014-04-07     FALSE
7    1.4.1 2013-11-27     FALSE
8      1.4 2013-11-20     FALSE
9      1.3 2013-07-04     FALSE
            ...

You can install the version you want.

install.versions('checkpoint', '0.3.9')

And check which version you have currently installed.

installed.versions('checkpoint')

[1] "0.3.9"

You can also install the live version on CRAN on a specific date.

install.dates('checkpoint', '2015-01-01')

installation

The package is on CRAN so you can install it with:

install.packages('versions')

You can also install straight from GitHub using devtools:

devtools::install_github('goldingn/versions')

why?

devtools::install_version installs a stated package version from source files stored on the CRAN archives. However CRAN does not store binary versions of packages so Windows users need to have RTools installed and Windows and OSX users get longer installation times.

checkpoint uses the Revolution Analytics MRAN server to install packages (from source or binary) as they were available on a given date. It also provides a helpful interface to detect the packages in use in a directory and install all of those packages for a given date. checkpoint doesn't provide install.packages-like functionality however, and that's what versions aims to do, by querying MRAN.

As MRAN only goes back to 2014-09-17, versions can only install packages on or after this date.