# Dependency resolution for R package development

#### Jim Hester, Hadley Wickham, Gábor Csárdi

#### 2024-03-17

# Package remotes

Remotes, just like devtools, supports package dependency installation for packages not yet in a standard package repository such as CRAN or Bioconductor.

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:

    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.

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

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

    Remotes: r-lib/testthat@*release

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

    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.

    # 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.