[R-pkg-devel] installing packages from github

[Berry Boessenkool]

Dear fellow package developers,


I recently came across


source("https://install-github.me/MangoTheCat/goodpractice")


which seems very elegant to write into a github package readme as installation instructions.

That way, people wanting to simply use a package can avoid installing devtools with all its dependencies.

It is also a bit more concise than:


if(!requireNamespace("devtoools", quietly=TRUE)) install.packages("devtoools")
devtools::install_github("MangoTheCat/goodpractice")


And it (seems to) work for any github repo, so no drat [1] setup on the side of the package maintainer is needed.


I had never seen this before (probably just missed it) and install-github.me only shows "coming soon".

So I wonder:

- is this safe to use and platform compatible?

- why isn't it more common?

- are there yet better alternatives?

- do I miss something obvious?


Thanks ahead for thoughts and opinions,

Berry


[1] https://github.com/eddelbuettel/drat




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