manually installing packages

[alanaroseo]

Some of the dependencies for tidyverse didn't install, and couldn't be installed individually using install.packages(), I got the following message when I tried: Package which is only available in source form, and may need compilation of C/C++/Fortran: ‘utf8’ These will not be installed

Can I manually install them, and if so, how? Thanks! @ryanpeek @taylorreiter @mikoontz

[ryanpeek]

@alanaroseo , good question! Haven't had something like this in awhile. I have two guesses, but may need to know a bit more about your system first. Are you on a Windows 7 or 10 platform? (I'm assuming yes...). So, first option is unlikely but easier to deal with first, so let's try A, and if that doesn't work, try B.

• Option A: If you open RStudio, go to Tools > Global Options, and select "Packages". At the top under CRAN Mirror, it probably says "Global CDN - RStudio". Click on Change, and select any of the other USA options. These are the different places that all mirror the R packages we use. I don't think it should matter, but worth a try. We can always go back and change this. After you select something different, hit Ok and Ok again. Then try to reinstall tidyverse. If this works, awesome. Odds are it won't 😿 . So...

• Option B: This option requires a little more work. Happy to help if you need it, just let us know. But, I think you can do it! Here's what you need to do.

  • Open the Terminal in RStudio, and type "g++ -v" and see what you get. If it prints out a bunch of stuff and provides something at the end that looks like gcc version X.X.X, that means you have it installed. If not (which is my suspicion), there will be a very short message or error saying nothing found or not installed. g++ and gcc are one in the same, just different names. They are compilers that take raw code and build it into something your computer can use (i.e., a package). Essentially they are special code interpreters. Many systems come with a compiler pre-installed, but some don't. No big deal, just means you'll need to go download something called RTools. Currently you should hopefully be using the most recent version of R (3.4.x), so you'll want the Rtools34.exe.
  • There are some good instructions on how to install Rtools here. Just follow the directions from Toolchain up to Configuration (so stop at Configuration).
  • After this is completed, close R and restart your computer. Then reboot, start up RStudio and try to install tidyverse again.

I hope this solves this issue, but if not, please keep us posted. I'm leaving this issue open until we know things work.

[alanaroseo]

That didn't work, but I figured it out! Since RStudio was sharing a library with R, and my version of R was >3 years old (although RStudio was up to date), not all the tidyverse packages were available. Updating R did the trick, for some reason it is now making me install packages into a personal library, but I can get them to load, so that's not really an issue. Thanks a bunch! @ryanpeek @mikoontz

[ryanpeek]

Aha! Libraries and versions of R can be tricky, so it's always best to try and update the to most recent version. Glad you sorted it out!