Error loading tidyverse after fresh install - R (loadNamespace, broom, backports) - r

Question

I just updated R to version 4.0.2 and updated RStudio Desktop to version 1.3.959. As seen in the code below, I am unable to load tidyverse after what appears to be a successful installation. However, data.table installs and loads perfectly fine. Does anyone have experience with this? Thanks!
Code from console (tidyverse error):
> install.packages('tidyverse')
Installing package into ‘C:/Users/iangm/Documents/R/win-library/4.0’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
also installing the dependencies ‘RColorBrewer’, ‘scales’, ‘dplyr’, ‘ggplot2’
trying URL 'https://cran.rstudio.com/bin/windows/contrib/4.0/RColorBrewer_1.1-2.zip'
Content type 'application/zip' length 55583 bytes (54 KB)
downloaded 54 KB
trying URL 'https://cran.rstudio.com/bin/windows/contrib/4.0/scales_1.1.1.zip'
Content type 'application/zip' length 560984 bytes (547 KB)
downloaded 547 KB
trying URL 'https://cran.rstudio.com/bin/windows/contrib/4.0/dplyr_1.0.0.zip'
Content type 'application/zip' length 1302777 bytes (1.2 MB)
downloaded 1.2 MB
trying URL 'https://cran.rstudio.com/bin/windows/contrib/4.0/ggplot2_3.3.2.zip'
Content type 'application/zip' length 4068169 bytes (3.9 MB)
downloaded 3.9 MB
trying URL 'https://cran.rstudio.com/bin/windows/contrib/4.0/tidyverse_1.3.0.zip'
Content type 'application/zip' length 440050 bytes (429 KB)
downloaded 429 KB
package ‘RColorBrewer’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
package ‘scales’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
package ‘dplyr’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
package ‘ggplot2’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
package ‘tidyverse’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
The downloaded binary packages are in
C:\Users\iangm\AppData\Local\Temp\RtmpkNazQW\downloaded_packages
> library(tidyverse)
Error: package or namespace load failed for ‘tidyverse’:
.onLoad failed in loadNamespace() for 'broom', details:
call: loadNamespace(name)
error: there is no package called ‘backports’
Code from console (data.table success):
> install.packages('data.table')
Installing package into ‘C:/Users/iangm/Documents/R/win-library/4.0’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
trying URL 'https://cran.rstudio.com/bin/windows/contrib/4.0/data.table_1.12.8.zip'
Content type 'application/zip' length 2325868 bytes (2.2 MB)
downloaded 2.2 MB
package ‘data.table’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
The downloaded binary packages are in
C:\Users\iangm\AppData\Local\Temp\RtmpkNazQW\downloaded_packages
> library(data.table)
data.table 1.12.8 using 2 threads (see ?getDTthreads). Latest news: r-datatable.com

Answer 1

There can be some problem with package backports: try to reinstall that package and load tidyverse again:
install.packages("backports")
library(tidyverse)
If that doesn't work, there might be problem with packages built under an earlier major version of R (i.e. 3.x). Try reinstalling all the packages with:
update.packages(ask = FALSE, checkBuilt = TRUE)
See more info here:
Is there a way to automate reinstalling packages and their dependencies in r?