Packages depending on other packages fail with packrat 0.5.0

Problem

I am trying to install the R package pillar from CRAN using Packrat 0.5.0 on R 5.2.1, but for some reason the installation process breaks because the prerequisite package crayon is not detected even though it was automatically installed by install.packages.

Steps to reproduce

1. Create a dummy directory for a minimal project:

$ mkdir ~/zzz
$ echo 'packrat::init("~/zzz")' | R --no-save

2. Run the R interpreter inside this directory:

$ cd ~/zzz
$ R

On startup, R acknowledges the Packrat installation:

Packrat mode on. Using library in directory:
- "~/zzz/packrat/lib"

3. Try to install the pillar package:

> install.package("pillar")
Installing package into ‘/home/karltk/zzz/packrat/lib/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/3.5.2’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
also installing the dependencies ‘assertthat’, ‘cli’, ‘crayon’, ‘fansi’, ‘rlang’, ‘utf8’
... [SNIP]
* installing *source* package ‘crayon’ ...
** package ‘crayon’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
** R
** inst
** byte-compile and prepare package for lazy loading
** help
*** installing help indices
** building package indices
** testing if installed package can be loaded
* DONE (crayon)
... [SNIP]
* installing *source* package ‘pillar’ ...
... [SNIP]
** testing if installed package can be loaded
Error: package or namespace load failed for ‘pillar’:
 .onLoad failed in loadNamespace() for 'pillar', details:
  call: loadNamespace(name)
  error: there is no package called ‘crayon’
Error: loading failed
Execution halted
ERROR: loading failed
* removing ‘/home/karltk/zzz/packrat/lib/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/3.5.2/pillar’

4. Verify that the crayon library actually exists and is accessible:

library(crayon)
?crayon

Environment information

Output from R sessionInfo:

R version 3.5.2 (2018-12-20)
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
Running under: Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS

Matrix products: default
BLAS: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/blas/libblas.so.3.7.1
LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/lapack/liblapack.so.3.7.1

locale:
 [1] LC_CTYPE=nb_NO.utf8        LC_NUMERIC=C              
 [3] LC_TIME=nb_NO.utf8         LC_COLLATE=nb_NO.utf8     
 [5] LC_MONETARY=nb_NO.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.utf8    
 [7] LC_PAPER=nb_NO.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C                 
 [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C            
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=nb_NO.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C       

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] compiler_3.5.2

Output from cat /etc/lsb-relase:

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=18.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=bionic
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS"

Output from R:

> packrat::status()
Up to date.

Discussion

I've tried with install.packages('pillar', quiet = FALSE, verbose = TRUE) to dig deeper into the issue, but not found any additional information that I was able to use. It seems such a basic problem that I suspect this might be a PEBCAC-situation, but I've been unable to figure out why the reshape2 package installs just fine, whereas the pillar package does not.

Reproduce the failure in a minimal project using packrat::init, install.packages('pillar'), and packrat::status(), then trace Packrat's package installation and dependency-loading entry points. The issue names no source file or test; consider the investigation complete when the installed crayon package is correctly visible while pillar is tested.