renv::install('git@github.com:ACCOUNT/repo_name.git@branch_name',
rebuild = TRUE,
upgrade = 'always',
git = 'external',
prompt = FALSE)Renv and github
Sometimes we need to use renv to install from github. in the simple form it works just as usual, e.g.
renv::install(galenholt/hydrogauge) . But there are complications, and the syntax is really poorly documented. It uses remotes under the hood but does not always use the same syntax.
Authentication
Authentication to private repos is not well documented. There are two options, SSH and HTTPS. Both are possible, but each have tricks that are not clear from the renv docs.
HTTPS
This is what is usually the default, but to get it to work with renv, there are some tricks. In all cases for private repos, you’ll need to set up a github PAT (I found the usethis instructions easier to follow than those at github).
For the longest time I wasn’t able to authenticate to private repos. Until I was reading the usethis docs, which note that remotes (which renv uses for github) doesn’t hit gitcreds to obtain the GitHub PAT. So, the solution is to install gitcreds (or devtools or usethis, really; we almost always need at least one of them), run gitcreds::gitcreds_get() in the session to activate the PAT (‘tickle’ it, in the usethis docs), and then we can install renv::install('private/repo').
The other solution is to use pak , which seems to be where the tidyverse crew is moving. pak uses gitcreds, so just works if we use pak::pkg_install('private/repo') . To set that up with renv put options(renv.config.pak.enabled = TRUE) in .Rprofile and restart. The catch here, at least as far as I can tell, is that pak doesn’t hit the renv cache, so if you have multiple projects, it redownloads packages each time instead of linking to cached versions. I’d really like to figure out how to get pak to avoid unneeded downloads a la renv. I.e. why doesn’t options(renv.pak.enabled = TRUE) just use pak for all the downloading and building but still use the versioning and caching? It seems to lose at least the caching.
SSH
To use ssh (with authentication), the inbuilt git2r is failing, so we need git = 'external'.
Then we can use the ssh link. This assumes you’ve set up ssh.
renv::install('git@github.com:ACCOUNT/repo_name.git', git = 'external')
If we’re scripting, we likely want to add prompt = FALSE, and we can control upgrading other packages with upgrade = 'always' (this is documented).
Rebuilding
It is really hard to force it to build from source if the version number hasn’t changed. rebuild = TRUE usually works, but I also try to index version numbers with every commit now in packages I own.
Using branches
To get to a branch or ref, use @ref, not a ref argument as in remotes.