[Rd] Capture output of install.packages (pipe system2)

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 13-09-23 2:17 PM, Jeroen Ooms wrote:
> Is there any way to capture output (both stdout and stderr) from
> install.packages? Solutions like sink and capture.output don't work
> because the install.packages calls out to system2 which is executed in
> a separate process:
>
>      test <- capture.output(install.packages("MASS"))
>
> The system2 function does have arguments stdout and stderr but afaik
> these cannot be controlled via install.packages. I'm a bit reluctant
> to start rolling my own version of install.packages just for this
> reason.
>
> Is there any way to somehow grab this output? Or alternatively, is
> there a way to make R pipe stdout and stderr from system2 in such a
> way that they can be captured with sink or capture.output in the R
> parent process?

See the recent thread 
<https://mailman.stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2013-September/067552.html> 
for an approach to this.

Duncan Murdoch