[R-pkg-devel] Problem with loading package "devtools" from CRAN.

[Rolf Turner]

Executive summary:

> The devtools package on CRAN appears to be broken.
> Installing devtools from github (using remotes::install_github())
> seems to give satisfactory results.

This morning my software up-dater (Ubuntu 22.04.4) prompted me to
install updated versions of some software, including r-base.  I thereby
obtained what I believe is the latest version of R (4.4.0 (2024-04-24)).

Then I could not load the "devtools" package, which is fairly crucial to
my work.

A bit of web-searching got me to a post on github by Henrik Bengtsson,
which referred to the devtools problem.  I therefore decided to try
installing devtools from github:

    remotes::install_github("r-lib/devtools",lib="/home/rolf/Rlib")

Some 50-odd packages seemed to require up-dating.  I went for it, and
after a fairly long wait, while messages about the updating flowed by,
devtools seemed to get installed.  Now "library(devtools)" runs without
error, so I am happy with my own situation.  However there seems to be
a problem with the devtools package on CRAN, which ought to be fixed.

cheers,

Rolf Turner

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Department of Statistics
University of Auckland
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