R help - Oct 2009 - Keeping package sources for recompilation with new R version?

Hi

I am using Ubuntu Hardy, and I installing many packages from source. I am
keeping my R packages fairly up to date.

My question is: is there a way, of keeping the source packages, so that when
I am installing a new version of R, an update.packages(checkBuilt=TRUE) will
only fetch the packages when newer ones are available, but otherwise will
use the local copies?

To rephrase it, is it possible to have some kind of local repository for the
source packages which are installed, so that only packages are downloaded
when newer ones are available? I could use destdir to specify the directory
in which to save the source files of the packages, but how can I use this
directory as a first choice, and only download if a newer version exists?

Rainer

-- 
Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation Biology,
UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)

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Rainer M Krug wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I am using Ubuntu Hardy, and I installing many packages from source. I am
> keeping my R packages fairly up to date.
> 
> My question is: is there a way, of keeping the source packages, so that
when
> I am installing a new version of R, an update.packages(checkBuilt=TRUE)
will
> only fetch the packages when newer ones are available, but otherwise will
> use the local copies?
> 
> To rephrase it, is it possible to have some kind of local repository for
the
> source packages which are installed, so that only packages are downloaded
> when newer ones are available? I could use destdir to specify the directory
> in which to save the source files of the packages, but how can I use this
> directory as a first choice, and only download if a newer version exists?
> 
> Rainer
> 

I think it won't work out of the box, but you can do it with little 
efforts. The probably easiest way is to

1) make the local directory of source packages a repository by adding a 
PACKAGES file using write_PACKAGES() from package tools,
2) choose your local repository first on the list of repositories and 
second a repository on a CRAN and/or BioC mirror etc.,
3) use update.packages() and it will grab from your first repository if 
there is no repository with a newer version number.

Best,
Uwe Ligges