ggplot2 fails to load, with 'rlang' package error

Question

This is the error message:

Error: package or namespace load failed for ‘ggplot2’ in loadNamespace(i, c(lib.loc, .libPaths()), versionCheck = vI[[i]]): namespace ‘rlang’ 0.3.4 is already loaded, but >= 0.4.0 is required

In addition to a Warning message:

package ‘ggplot2’ was built under R version 3.6.1

Please help. Thanks a lot.

Derail

Restart R so there are no packages loaded. Install the latest version of rlang with install.packages("rlang") and then install.packages("ggplot2"). It's unclear how you may have gotten the dependencies out of sync; normally that's not very easy to do unless you are installing packages in an unusual way. – Batty

thank you very much, worked for me after updating the R and Rstudio to the latest version. – Derail

This is a rather bizarre type of error... in my case I re-installed R and RStudio and used the code install.packages("https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/rlang/rlang_0.4.10.tar.gz", repo=NULL, type="source") to solve this issue. Very inconvenient... – Madrepore

Answer 1

Just providing a more complete answer for people to follow.

Remove packages with

remove.packages("rlang")

That may not work as you may need to delete the package from your R library. To find where you R library is run

.libPaths()

Once you've deleted the rlang folder from there you can restart R and run

install.packages("https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/rlang/rlang_0.4.9.tar.gz", repo=NULL, type="source") # for specific rlang version, in this case 0.4.9. For latest version can run install.packages("rlang")
packageVersion("rlang") #to check you now have rlang version you want

Inwardly

Answer 2

Figured just a slight modification to the first answer worked best for me: restart R, then:

remove.packages("rlang")
remove.packages("dplyr")

install.packages("rlang")
install.packages("dplyr")

library(rlang)
library(dplyr)

Weil

Answer 3

My solution is to restart R and then update all the packages.

update.packages(ask = FALSE)

The problem with just removing & installing rlang, and then your desired package (here ggplot2), you might find there are other packages you have remove and install. Best to update all and save time.

Universally

Answer 4

Problem solved by updating the R and Rstudio, removing "rlang" package and reinstalling the package, removing "ggplot2" package and reinstalling the package back.

Derail

Answer 5

Just update your R package, because there is a new update in the ggplot2 package which supports the higher R ver, it should be 3.6.3 and greater !

Easy