rstudio / rstudio/packrat

packrat needs repository record in DESCRIPTION if a local CRAN-like repository is used

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Dominant language
R
Stars
409
Forks
89
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

During packrat:initial(), packrat 0.5.0 tries to infer where to find a package's source, and does so in a large if-then-else construction. If you have a package that has been successfully installed from a CRAN-like repository, but does not actually contain a "repository:" record, then internally the source gets marked as "unknown" and packrat::initial() fails when it does a snapshot. This dependency on a repository record in DESCRIPTION doesn't seem to be documented. At the very least it would be nice to make the error message more helpful by indicating this dependency. But an even better solution might be to have packrat check each configured repositories to see if any hold the source (our "repos" option was correctly pointing to our CRAN-like repository so it would have found it had it checked).

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start at packrat:initial() and trace the source-inference logic used before snapshotting. Reproduce the failure with a package installed from a local CRAN-like repository whose DESCRIPTION lacks a repository record, while the repos option points to that repository. Done means the dependency is handled or the error clearly explains the repository-record requirement.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
r
Domain
tooling
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
30/100

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