[Rd] improving the performance of install.packages

[William Dunlap]

Suppose update.packages("pkg") installed "pkg" if it were not already
installed, in addition to its current behavior of installing "pkg" if "pkg"
is installed but a newer version is available.  The OP could then use
update.packages() all the time instead of install.packages() the first time
and update.packages() subsequent times.

Bill Dunlap
TIBCO Software
wdunlap tibco.com


On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 2:51 PM Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan using gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 08/11/2019 2:55 p.m., Joshua Bradley wrote:
> > I could do this...and I have before. This brings up a more fundamental
> > question though. You're asking me to write code that changes the logic of
> > the installation process (i.e. writing my own package installer). Instead
> > of doing that, I would rather integrate that logic into R itself to
> improve
> > the baseline installation process. This api proposal change would be
> > additive and would not break legacy code.
>
> That's not true.  The current behaviour is equivalent to force=TRUE; I
> believe the proposal was to change the default to force=FALSE.
>
> If you didn't change the default, it wouldn't help your example:  the
> badly written script would run with force=TRUE, and wouldn't benefit at
> all.
>
> Duncan Murdoch
>
> >
> > Package managers like pip (python), conda (python), yum (CentOS), apt
> > (Ubuntu), and apk (Alpine) are all "smart" enough to know (by their
> > defaults) when to not download a package again. By proposing this change,
> > I'm essentially asking that R follow some of the same conventions and
> best
> > practices that other package managers have adopted over the decades.
> >
> > I assumed this list is used to discuss proposals like this to the R
> > codebase. If I'm on the wrong list, please let me know.
> >
> > P.S. if this change happened, it would be interesting to study the effect
> > it has on the bandwidth across all CRAN mirrors. A significant drop would
> > turn into actual $$ saved
> >
> > Josh Bradley
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 5:00 AM Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan using gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> On 08/11/2019 2:06 a.m., Joshua Bradley wrote:
> >>> Hello,
> >>>
> >>> Currently if you install a package twice:
> >>>
> >>> install.packages("testit")
> >>> install.packages("testit")
> >>>
> >>> R will build the package from source (depending on what OS you're
> using)
> >>> twice by default. This becomes especially burdensome when people are
> >> using
> >>> big packages (i.e. lots of depends) and someone has a script with:
> >>>
> >>> install.packages("tidyverse")
> >>> ...
> >>> ... later on down the script
> >>> ...
> >>> install.packages("dplyr")
> >>>
> >>> In this case, "dplyr" is part of the tidyverse and will install twice.
> As
> >>> the primary "package manager" for R, it should not install a package
> >> twice
> >>> (by default) when it can be so easily checked. Indeed, many people
> resort
> >>> to writing a few lines of code to filter out already-installed packages
> >> An
> >>> r-help post from 2010 proposed a solution to improving the default
> >>> behavior, by adding "force=FALSE" as a api addition to
> install.packages.(
> >>> https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2010-May/239492.html)
> >>>
> >>> Would the R-core devs still consider this proposal?
> >>
> >> Whether or not they'd do it, it's easy for you to do it.
> >>
> >> install.packages <- function(pkgs, ..., force = FALSE) {
> >>     if (!force) {
> >>       pkgs <- Filter(Negate(requireNamespace), pkgs
> >>
> >>     utils::install.packages(pkgs, ...)
> >> }
> >>
> >> You might want to make this more elaborate, e.g. doing update.packages()
> >> on the ones that exist.  But really, isn't the problem with the script
> >> you're using, which could have done a simple test before forcing a slow
> >> install?
> >>
> >> Duncan Murdoch
> >>
> >
> >       [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> >
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> >
>
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