[R] Packages sometimes don't update, but no error or warning is thrown

[Berwin A Turlach]

G'day Philipp,

On Tue, 13 Feb 2024 09:59:17 +0100
gernophil--- via R-help <r-help using r-project.org> wrote:

> this question is related to this
> (https://community.rstudio.com/t/packages-are-not-updating/166214/3),
> [...]

> To sum it up: If I am updating packages (be it via Bioconductor or
> CRAN) some packages simply don’t update, [...]

> I would expect any kind of message that the package will not be
> updated, since no newer binary is available or a prompt, if I want to
> compile from source. 

RStudio is doing its own thing for some task, including
'install.packages()' (and for some reasons, at least on the platforms
on which I use RStudio, RStudio calls 'install.packages()' and not
'update.packages()' when an update is requested via the GUI). See:

RStudio> install.packages
function (...) 
.rs.callAs(name, hook, original, ...)
<environment: 0x55bab9293998>

compared to:

R> install.packages
function (pkgs, lib, repos = getOption("repos"), contriburl =
    contrib.url(repos, type), method, available = NULL, destdir = NULL,
    dependencies = NA, type = getOption("pkgType"), configure.args =
    getOption("configure.args"), configure.vars =
    getOption("configure.vars"), clean = FALSE, Ncpus =
    getOption("Ncpus", 1L), verbose = getOption("verbose"), libs_only =
    FALSE, INSTALL_opts, quiet = FALSE, keep_outputs = FALSE, ...) 
{
[...]

So if you use Install/Update in the Packages tab of RStudio and do not
experience the behaviour you are expecting, it is something that you
need to discuss with Posit, not with R. :)

> However, the only message I get is: 
> ``` 
> trying URL '<url_to_package>' 

The package name has the version number encoded in it, so theoretical
you should be able to tell at this point whether the package that is
downloaded is the version that is already installed, hence no update
will happen.

Best wishes,

	Berwin