Directory not found when using Drat on a network drive - r

Question

I have developed a package that I want to share with my colleagues at work.
I have a network drive in which I created the local repository structure that looks like this:
MyRepo
\__bin
\__windows
\__contrib
\__src
\__contrib
All folders are empty.
So I built my package with RStudio on Windows using the "Build/More/Build source package" menu, which created a tar.gz file.
Then I tried:
drat::insertPackage("../myPkg_0.0.0.9000.tar.gz",
repodir = "file://networkdrive/path/to/MyRepo",
action = "prune")
But this gives me an error:
Error: Directory file://networkdrive/path/to/MyRepo not found
Which is strange because file.exists(//networkdrive/path/to/MyRepo) returns true.
OK, then I tried:
drat::insertPackage("../myPkg_0.0.0.9000.tar.gz",
repodir = "//networkdrive/path/to/MyRepo",
action = "prune")
Without the file: in the repository path and I get another error:
tar (child): "//networkdrive/path/to/MyRepo/src/contrib/myPkg_0.0.0.9000.tar.gz: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar (child): Error is not recoverable: exiting now
/usr/bin/tar: Child returned status 2
/usr/bin/tar: myPkg/DESCRIPTION: Not found in archive
/usr/bin/tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
reading DESCRIPTION for package ‘myPkg’ failed with message:
cannot open the connection
But when I go in the "//networkdrive/path/to/MyRepo/src/contrib" folder, I can definitely see the myPkg_0.0.0.9000.tar.gz file that has been copied despite the error message.
Can anyone help?
> sessionInfo()
R version 3.3.3 (2017-03-06)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows 7 x64 (build 7601) Service Pack 1
locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=French_France.1252 LC_CTYPE=French_France.1252 LC_MONETARY=French_France.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C LC_TIME=French_France.1252
attached base packages:
[1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base
loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] drat_0.1.2 tools_3.3.3 git2r_0.18.0

Answer 1

I know this is old, but my colleague just came across the same problem and found this post. I believe the issue may be the lack of a trailing slash in your directory name. I have been able to recreate the error with a mapped network drive. I can resolve the issue by using "H:/MyRepo/" instead of "H:/MyRepo".
I haven't tried it with the "file://" format, but I wanted to include my answer in case someone else comes across this question.

Answer 2

Ok, so after some research, here is my conclusions.
It cannot be done
It's not Drat's fault
The reason why it does not work is that the tools::write_PACKAGES function does not work on network drives. Period.
I manually copied my package on the network drive, then ran setwd() to its location and executed write_PACKAGES(".", type="source") and I got the same error.
So to make this work, I just left my package.tar.gz file on a local drive, ran the tools::write_PACKAGES command locally and then moved the files to the network drive.
Adding the network drive to my repository list using options(repos = c(MyRepo = "file://networkdrive/path/to/MyRepo/")) works: RStudio and available.packages find my package.
It's not completely satisfactory, but I think it's the only way today.

Answer 3

I was having this problem as well and finally got to the bottom of it today.
For me, the problem was not isolated to just network locations but also occurred on C: drive. The root cause was the version of tar.exe being used to unpack the existing packages in the package directory. Calls to utils::untar are made in the tools::write_PACKAGES function.
The documentation for utils::untar explains that on Windows, external tar.exe is tried first. Sure enough, I had a version installed with Git which when used with default arguments fails when a colon is in the file name. I was able to force utils::untar to use to use the RBuildTools version of tar.exe instead by setting the environment variable TAR to "internal".
drat::insertPackage now works.