Installing additional packages through Rprofile - r

Question

I want to install additional packages besides the default ones every time I restart my R Session.
I have tried this: options(HTTPUserAgent = sprintf("R/%s R (%s)", getRversion(), paste(getRversion(), R.version$platform, R.version$arch, R.version$os)))
install.packages(c(
'shinydashboard',
'shinyWidgets',
'rlist',
'sortable',
'tidyverse',
'XML',
'DescTools',
'plotly',
'leaflet',
'tidyquant',
'umap'
))
And this options(defaultPackages = c(getOption("defaultPackages"), "tidyquant", ...)) neither of which works. If all I want to do is to install the tidyquant package upon the R Session restart, how do I get it to work inside the Rprofile file?

Answer 1

I would definitely take #dirk-eddelbuettel's advice on this (XY problem), but it is possible if you add this to your .Rprofile:
.First <- function(){
utils::install.packages("tidyquant", repos="https://cran.csiro.au/")
library(tidyquant)
}
(This command is run before any packages are loaded so you need to specify the install.packages function comes from utils).
Not sure if this applies to windows; my system info:
> sessionInfo()
R version 4.1.3 (2022-03-10)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin17.0 (64-bit)
Running under: macOS Monterey 12.4
Matrix products: default
LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.1/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib
locale:
[1] en_AU.UTF-8/en_AU.UTF-8/en_AU.UTF-8/C/en_AU.UTF-8/en_AU.UTF-8
attached base packages:
[1] graphics grDevices utils datasets stats methods
[7] base
other attached packages:
[1] tidyquant_1.0.4 quantmod_0.4.20
[3] TTR_0.24.3 PerformanceAnalytics_2.0.4
[5] xts_0.12.1 zoo_1.8-10
[7] lubridate_1.8.0
loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] magrittr_2.0.3 tidyselect_1.1.2 munsell_0.5.0
[4] colorspace_2.0-3 lattice_0.20-45 R6_2.5.1
[7] rlang_1.0.2 quadprog_1.5-8 fansi_1.0.3
[10] dplyr_1.0.9 httr_1.4.3 tcltk_4.1.3
[13] tools_4.1.3 grid_4.1.3 gtable_0.3.0
[16] utf8_1.2.2 DBI_1.1.2 cli_3.3.0
[19] ellipsis_0.3.2 assertthat_0.2.1 tibble_3.1.7
[22] lifecycle_1.0.1 crayon_1.5.1 purrr_0.3.4
[25] ggplot2_3.3.6 vctrs_0.4.1 curl_4.3.2
[28] Quandl_2.11.0 glue_1.6.2 compiler_4.1.3
[31] pillar_1.7.0 generics_0.1.2 scales_1.2.0
[34] jsonlite_1.8.0 pkgconfig_2.0.3
>
N.B. Choose your CRAN mirror accordingly (unless you also happen to be in Australia): https://cran.r-project.org/mirrors.html