3.4.3. Installing a package from CRAN#

You can search for R packages on CRAN by consulting the Task Views for a categorized listing or the Table of available packages (currently 17157 packages). Once you have identified a package to install, you can follow the steps below to install it.

I will install the BiocManager package as an example below.

1. Install package using install.packages() command#

Start an R session.

At the prompt, type the install.packages() command with the name of the package in quotes. For example:

install.packages("BiocManager")

Press the ENTER key to proceed.

2. Confirm use of personal library#

You will notice a prompt requesting you to confirm if you would like to use a personal library:

Installing package into ‘/usr/local/lib/R/site-library’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
Warning in install.packages("BiocManager") :
'lib = "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library"' is not writable
Would you like to use a personal library instead? (yes/No/cancel) yes

Type yes to confirm and press the ENTER key. Why use a personal library?.

3. Create personal library if necessary#

If you have never installed a package, the personal library directory will not exist. If so, you will be prompted for confirmation to create it:

Would you like to create a personal library
‘~/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.6’
to install packages into? (yes/No/cancel) yes

Type yes to confirm and press the ENTER key.

Note

The next time you install a package, you will not see this prompt.

4. Package installation summary#

Installation should now proceed:

trying URL 'https://cloud.r-project.org/src/contrib/BiocManager_1.30.10.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 40205 bytes (39 KB)
==================================================
downloaded 39 KB

* installing *source* package ‘BiocManager’ ...
** package ‘BiocManager’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
** using staged installation
** R
** inst
** byte-compile and prepare package for lazy loading
** help
*** installing help indices
** building package indices
** installing vignettes
** testing if installed package can be loaded from temporary location
** testing if installed package can be loaded from final location
** testing if installed package keeps a record of temporary installation path
* DONE (BiocManager)

The downloaded source packages are in
   ‘/tmp/RtmpDgmOZ8/downloaded_packages’
>

If there are no errors during the process, the package installation is successful.