[R-sig-ME] Trouble getting development version of lme4

[Ben Bolker]

Ross Boylan <ross at ...> writes:

> 
> Running on Windows 7, R 2.15.2, I have been unable to get the 
> development version of lme4 working.  I'd appreciate any assistance.
> 
> Following the instructions at http://lme4.r-forge.r-project.org/
> 
>  1.
> 
>     install.packages("lme4",repos="http://r-forge.r-project.org")
>     Installing package(s) into
'c:/Users/rdboylan/Documents/R/R-2.15.2/site-library'
>     (as 'lib' is unspecified)
>     Warning message:
>     package 'lme4' is not available (for R version 2.15.2)
> 
>  2.
> 
>     install.packages("lme4",repos="http://lme4.r-forge.r-project.org/repos")

 [snip] 
>     Warning: dependencies 'minqa', 'Rcpp', 'RcppEigen' are not available
> 
>        There is a binary version available (and will be installed) but the
>        source version is later:
>                  binary        source
>     lme4 0.999902344-0 0.999902345-0
> 
>     Warning: dependencies 'minqa', 'Rcpp', 'RcppEigen' are not available

 [snip]

>     Content type 'application/zip' length 2027695 bytes (1.9 Mb)
>     opened URL
>     downloaded 1.9 Mb
> 
>     package 'lme4' successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
>     Warning: cannot remove prior installation of package 'lme4
> ## I had installed the one from CRAN, but detached and unloaded 
> it before attempting installation
>     # Do I need to manually delete the existing install?

  You shouldn't need to.  Normally this happens when the package
is still loaded while you're trying to install, but ...

> 
>  3. Then I tried to get the dependencies listed above from CRAN. This
>     mostly worked, but
> 
>     package 'minga' is not available (for R version 2.15.2)
> 
>  4. The end result:
> 
>     > library(lme4)
>     Error in library(lme4) : there is no package called 'lme4'
> 
>     Despite the message in 2, it appears lme4 was mostly removed, but
>     there is still a dll there.  I thought detach  unload was supposed
>     to take care of that.
> 
> My guess is exiting ESS and deleting the installed lme4 files will fix 
> some of the problems, but it looks as if one required package, minga, is 
> unavailable.

   Well, the major problem with this is that the package is called
'minqa', not 'minga'.

  I do apologize that things are a bit of a mess right now; we've
been having trouble with the R-forge build because of some version/
dependency problems with Rcpp.

  A couple of general thoughts:

 * development is now happening on github.  If you want to install
the very latest version, and have the tools for compiling for source,
try

install.packages(c("Rcpp","RcppEigen","minqa","devtools"))
library("devtools")
install_github("lme4",user="lme4")

  Do please let us/me know, if you try it, whether that works
and/or whether you encounter problems. 

  In general for installing from R-forge but wanting to be
able to get the dependencies from CRAN as well:

 install.packages("lme4",repos=c("http://r-forge.r-project.org",
      getOption("repos")))

  In the very near future we hope to 
(1) build some updated binaries and put them up at 
http://lme4.r-forge.r-project.org/repos
(2) update the installation instructions (we may stop referring
to the automatically built r-forge binaries, since these will
start falling behind the version on github)

  Ben Bolker