Capture output of install.packages (pipe system2)
On 13-09-23 08:20 PM, Hadley Wickham wrote:
Brian Ripley's reply describes how it is done in the tools package. For
example, as I sent privately to Jeroen,
x <- system2("Rscript", "-e \"install.packages('MASS',
repos='http://probability.ca/cran')\"", stdout=TRUE, stderr=TRUE)
captures all of the output from installing MASS. As Jeroen pointed out,
that isn't identical to running install.packages() in the current session; a
real version of it should fill in more of the arguments, not leave them at
their defaults.
It does seems a little crazy that you're in a R process, then open another one, which then opens a 3rd session! (often indirectly by calling R CMD install which then calls an internal function in tools)
It does seem very much more straight forward to do this in the process
above R:
R --vanilla --slave -e "install.packages('whatever',
repo='http://cran.r-project.org')" >R.out 2>&1
(Omit mailer wrap.) Your mileage may vary depending on your OS.
Paul
Hadley