Outdated dependencies and install.packages()

Wed, Aug 20, 2008 8:06 AM

Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

On Wed, 20 Aug 2008, Peter Dalgaard wrote:

This looks like a buglet:

install.packages("lme4", depend=TRUE, lib="~/Rlibrary/")

--- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
[...snip...]
** preparing package for lazy loading
Error: package 'Matrix' 0.999375-4 was found, but >= 0.999375.11 is
required by 'lme4'
Execution halted
ERROR: lazy loading failed for package 'lme4'
** Removing '/home/bs/pd/Rlibrary/lme4'
** Restoring previous '/home/bs/pd/Rlibrary/lme4'

and the DESCRIPTION file for lme 4 does have

Depends: methods, R(? 2.7.0), Matrix(? 0.999375-11), lattice
<http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/lattice/index.html>


Looks like we're either not checking the version requirement of
dependencies, or something is making 4 > 11... (from my reading of the
code, it is the former, but I could have missed something).

We don't check version requirements of dependencies in
install.packages(). That's a minefield related to having multiple
versions of a package on a system and which gets loaded/namespace
loaded, so you can easily have the needed version but pick up a
different one.

Depending on whether lazy-loading is in place (and various other
issues) you may or may not need the dependencies to install the
package.  It's also a problem that you can update dependencies to
incompatible ones, so the versions available at installation are only
part of the story.

I don't see why the message reports .11 not -11, but that may be
related to "package_version" classes.

We should at least document the behaviour.

I am not sure where you think it should be documented and is not.
But for install.packages():

dependencies: logical indicating to also install uninstalled packages
          on which these packages depend/suggest/import (and so on
          recursively).  Not used if 'repos = NULL'. Can also be a
          character vector, a subset of 'c("Depends", "Imports",
          "Suggests")'.

'uninstalled' seems pretty clear to me.

It isn't. Matrix 0.999375-11 was 'uninstalled'. The above could just
mean that if you installed it, it wouldn't be installed again.

Something like "Notice that version dependencies are not checked." would
help. (Assuming that people read the help page.)

O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             ?ster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph:  (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk)              FAX: (+45) 35327907

Outdated dependencies and install.packages()

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