Message-ID: <DB5PR0401MB17816D3952BE3F5899DEF271D5910@DB5PR0401MB1781.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com>
Date: 2017-09-04T14:22:35Z
From: Berry Boessenkool
Subject: [R-pkg-devel] installing packages from github
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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