How to get out of the R dependency hell? - r

Question

I have very weird dependency error on my R/R-studio environment after I updated the R-studio version from v1.2.5042 to the latest (v2022.02.2+485);
The problem is that when I try to load a package, some packages logs an error, as follows.
> library(plotly)
Error: package or namespace load failed for ‘plotly’ in loadNamespace(j <- i[[1L]], c(lib.loc, .libPaths()), versionCheck = vI[[j]]):
namespace ‘htmlwidgets’ 1.5.1 is already loaded, but >= 1.5.2.9001 is required
In addition: Warning message:
package ‘plotly’ was built under R version 4.0.5
Umm, very weird. Because before I updated the R studio version at least for the plotly package, the importing command never logged an error similar to the above. I'm very confused.
(btw I updated the R studio version because 1. The old version was 2020's one, very old; 2. The plotly package didn't work well, for example it makes R-studio CPU 100% on the PC;)
So, I googled and found an SO post that mentions to the error, namespace xx is already loaded, but >= xx is required:
R install package loaded namespace - Stack Overflow
The answers say in this case I just need to re-install the error-mentioned package and reload it; So I did:
> install.packages("htmlwidgets")
Error in install.packages : Updating loaded packages
> install.packages("htmlwidgets")
WARNING: Rtools is required to build R packages but is not currently installed. Please download and install the appropriate version of Rtools before proceeding:
https://cran.rstudio.com/bin/windows/Rtools/
Installing package into ‘C:/_documents/R/win-library/4.0’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
trying URL 'https://cran.rstudio.com/bin/windows/contrib/4.0/htmlwidgets_1.5.4.zip'
Content type 'application/zip' length 905152 bytes (883 KB)
downloaded 883 KB
package ‘htmlwidgets’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
The downloaded binary packages are in
C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Temp\RtmpeCeZz2\downloaded_packages
Then
> library(htmlwidgets)
Warning message:
package ‘htmlwidgets’ was built under R version 4.0.5
And re-try to the command:
> library(plotly)
Error: package or namespace load failed for ‘plotly’ in loadNamespace(j <- i[[1L]], c(lib.loc, .libPaths()), versionCheck = vI[[j]]):
namespace ‘rlang’ 0.4.6 is already loaded, but >= 0.4.10 is required
In addition: Warning message:
package ‘plotly’ was built under R version 4.0.5
Wow, a new package name pops up, ‘rlang’. This isn't right.
Anyways I tried to deal with the ‘rlang’ this time:
> install.packages("rlang")
Error in install.packages : Updating loaded packages
> install.packages("rlang")
WARNING: Rtools is required to build R packages but is not currently installed. Please download and install the appropriate version of Rtools before proceeding:
https://cran.rstudio.com/bin/windows/Rtools/
Installing package into ‘C:/_documents/R/win-library/4.0’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
trying URL 'https://cran.rstudio.com/bin/windows/contrib/4.0/rlang_1.0.2.zip'
Content type 'application/zip' length 1718545 bytes (1.6 MB)
downloaded 1.6 MB
package ‘rlang’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
The downloaded binary packages are in
C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Temp\RtmpeCeZz2\downloaded_packages
Then:
> library(rlang)
Error in value[[3L]](cond) :
Package ‘rlang’ version 0.4.6 cannot be unloaded:
Error in unloadNamespace(package) : namespace ‘rlang’ is imported by ‘htmltools’, ‘ellipsis’, ‘tidyr’, ‘purrr’, ‘ggplot2’, ‘tidyselect’, ‘vctrs’, ‘dplyr’, ‘tibble’, ‘lifecycle’, ‘pillar’ so cannot be unloaded
In addition: Warning message:
package ‘rlang’ was built under R version 4.0.5
Woah, I can't even load the dependency package this time. I'm sure something isn't right in my R and/or R-studio.
What's happening, and how can I solve this issue? I mean when simply updating R-studio and restarting doesn' work, what can I do? Thanks.
R.version:
> R.version
_
platform x86_64-w64-mingw32
arch x86_64
os mingw32
system x86_64, mingw32
status
major 4
minor 0.0
year 2020
month 04
day 24
svn rev 78286
language R
version.string R version 4.0.0 (2020-04-24)
nickname Arbor Day