Is there a function to check if a package installed with devtools::install_github has been updated?

Question

I am the author of a package storred on github. My colleagues install this package with devtools::install_github(). They would like to test if the package has been updated or not. Is there a function to check that there has been a commit to the github master branch since they last installed the package?

Carport

Answer 1

This is an indirect approach I am aware of You can then find your installed version by packageVersion()

There's a package available which goes by the name versions. The function available.versions() could help you. This will find you all the package versions ever available.

packageVersion("ggplot2")
#[1] ‘1.0.1’

available.versions("ggplot2")

#$ggplot2
#   version       date available
#1    1.0.1 2015-03-17      TRUE
#2    1.0.0 2014-05-21     FALSE
#3  0.9.3.1 2013-03-02     FALSE
...

Update:

Package devtools has functions package_deps() and dev_package_deps().

package_deps("ggplot2")

# Needs update -----------------------------
# package      installed available
# ggplot2      2.0.0     2.1.0    
# scales       NA        0.4.0   

?package_deps
"Find all dependencies of a CRAN or dev package."

---

{This function is untested for development package from my end . However I believe this should do your job.}

Supercolumnar

Thanks, this sounds like a nice tool. versions::available.versions() will "list all of the past versions of the named packages ever uploaded to CRAN". So this will not work with package installed from Github. – Carport

@PaulRougieux added an update. Hope it works out for you. Let me know if not. – Supercolumnar

How would you specify the repo argument of dev_package_deps() for a github repos? For example for ggplot2. – Carport

e.g. After you install your package, try package_deps("rNVD3", repos = "ramnathv/rNVD3") – Supercolumnar

but package_deps("ggplot2", repos = "hadley/ggplot2") doesn't check the "hadley/ggplot2" repository on github, it just returns "Not on CRAN ----". While package_deps("ggplot2") tells me the package that need to be updated based on information available on CRAN. What's unclear to me in ?dev_package_deps is what does a "dev" package mean? I guess it's a package you are developing on your system, not a package hosted on github. – Carport

package_deps() is part of the package remotes – Fula

Answer 2

Having the same problem, I created this function, getting inspired by devtools::install_github, that does the job for me. As I understand it it compares the SHA of the installed package and the one on github. I think it requires that the package is installed using devtools::install_github, but haven't tested it extensively enough.

check_github_sha <- function(username, repo, host = "api.github.com") {
  if (Sys.getenv("GITHUB_PAT") == "") {
    stop('Make sure that you have set a "Personal Acess Token" (PAT) named GITHUB_PAT in .Renviron')
  }
  remote_obj <- remote <- list(
    host = host,
    package = NULL,
    repo = repo,
    subdir = NULL,
    username = username,
    ref = "HEAD",
    sha = NULL,
    auth_token = Sys.getenv("GITHUB_PAT")
  )
  remote_obj <- structure(remote_obj, format = format, class = c("github_remote", "remote"))

  remote_sha <- remotes::remote_sha(remote_obj)
  local_sha <- utils::packageDescription(repo, lib.loc = .libPaths())
  if(!"GithubSHA1" %in% names(local_sha)){
    cat(paste0("\033[0;", 33, "m", paste0(repo, "is not installed from github. Probably using build in Rstudio or similar"), "\033[0m", "\n"))
    
  } else {
  
  if (remote_sha != local_sha["GithubSHA1"]) {
    cat(paste0("\033[0;", 31, "m", paste0("NOTE: there is a new version of ", repo, " available"), "\033[0m", "\n"))
  } else {
    cat(paste0("\033[0;", 32, "m", paste0("you have the latest version of ", repo), "\033[0m", "\n"))
  }
  }
}


check_github_sha(username = "username", repo = "repo")

Eckhardt