vignettes/dependencies.Rmd

---
title: "Dependency resolution for R package development"
author: "Jim Hester, Hadley Wickham, Gábor Csárdi"
date: "`r Sys.Date()`"
output:
  rmarkdown::html_vignette:
    keep_md: true
vignette: >
  %\VignetteIndexEntry{Dependency resolution for R package development}
  %\VignetteEngine{knitr::rmarkdown}
  %\VignetteEncoding{UTF-8}
---

# Package remotes

Remotes, just like devtools, supports package dependency installation for packages not
yet in a standard package repository such as [CRAN](https://cran.r-project.org)
or [Bioconductor](https://bioconductor.org).

You can mark any regular dependency defined in the `Depends`, `Imports`,
`Suggests` or `Enhances` fields as being installed from a remote location by
adding the remote location to `Remotes` in your `DESCRIPTION` file. This will
cause remotes to download and install them from the specified location,
instead of CRAN.

The remote dependencies specified in `Remotes` should be described in the following form.

```
Remotes: [type::]<Repository>, [type2::]<Repository2>
```

The `type` is an optional parameter.  If the type is missing the default is
to install from GitHub. Additional remote dependencies should be separated by
commas, just like normal dependencies elsewhere in the `DESCRIPTION` file.

### GitHub

Because GitHub is the most commonly used unofficial package distribution in R, it's the default:

```yaml
Remotes: r-lib/testthat
```

You can also specify a specific hash, tag, or pull request (using the same syntax as `install_github()` if you want a particular commit. Otherwise the latest commit on the default branch is used.

```yaml
Remotes: r-lib/httr@v0.4,
  klutometis/roxygen#142,
  r-lib/testthat@c67018fa4970
```

The special `@*release` syntax will install the latest release:

```yaml
Remotes: r-lib/testthat@*release
```

A type of 'github' can be specified, but is not required

```yaml
Remotes: github::tidyverse/ggplot2
```

### Other sources

All of the currently supported install sources are available, see the 'See
Also' section in `?install_github` for a complete list.

```yaml
# GitLab
Remotes: gitlab::jimhester/covr

# Git
Remotes: git::git@bitbucket.org:djnavarro/lsr.git,
  git::https://github.com/igraph/rigraph.git@main

# Bitbucket
Remotes: bitbucket::sulab/mygene.r@default, djnavarro/lsr

# Bioconductor
Remotes: bioc::3.3/SummarizedExperiment#117513, bioc::release/Biobase

# SVN
Remotes: svn::https://github.com/tidyverse/stringr

# URL
Remotes: url::https://github.com/tidyverse/stringr/archive/HEAD.zip

# Local
Remotes: local::/pkgs/testthat
```

### CRAN submission

When you submit your package to CRAN, all of its dependencies must also be available on CRAN. For this reason, `devtools::release()` will warn you if you try to release a package with a `Remotes` field.