[R] issue with update.packages(), library 'utils'

[Paulo Barata]

Dr. Eddelbuettel,

Thank you for your message, quite reassuring for me. I agree with you, I see no problem in updating frequently the packages I use here. On system, Windows 10, with a good Internet connection, this takes just about one or two minutes, depending on the number of packages, and by that way I know I am using the most recent and corrected versions of the packages.

Best regards,

Paulo Barata

Rio de Janeiro - Brazil

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On 09-Jun-26 9:24, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> 
> On 8 June 2026 at 06:26, Jeff Newmiller via R-help wrote:
> | Don't upgrade packages just because upgrade.packages says there are new packages every day... that way leads to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
> 
> As a general rule, this is objectively questionable advice.
> 
> CRAN _excels_ at being _always being buildable / installable_.
> 
> To use a software analogy, we could call this 'build at @HEAD' as one would
> at a large mono-repo.  Which is what CRAN essentially is.  I have updated
> more or less daily / multiple times per week since CRAN started, and I have
> done so mostly on Linux where it is "even more expensive" as one generally
> instals from source (unless newer services like r2u or cran2copr are used).
> 
> But if you know what you are doing, and design you deployments well with
> packages you trust, and maybe avoid some others you trust less / have shown a
> tendency to change abruptly then this is as stable as it gets. I sometimes
> reference some examples for that: CRANberries has been running more-or-less
> unalted since 2007, on a machine that gets the daily (or close to daily)
> updates and has stayed alive near-constantly. Same for some things I run that
> are less visible to the outside.  So ... "your mileage may vary".  CRAN
> supports "continuous" updates just fine. It does it to itself too.
> 
> Dirk
>