Author: Jim Hester, Hadley Wickham
Date: 2021-06-04

# Devtools dependencies

#### Jim Hester, Hadley Wickham

#### 2021-06-04

# Package remotes

Devtools version 1.9 supports package dependency installation for packages not yet in a standard package repository such as CRAN or Bioconductor.

You can mark any regular dependency defined in the `Depends`, `Imports`, `Suggests` or `Enhances` fields as being installed from a remote location by adding the remote location to `Remotes` in your `DESCRIPTION` file. This will cause devtools to download and install them prior to installing your package (so they won’t be installed from CRAN).

The remote dependencies specified in `Remotes` should be described in the following form.

    Remotes: [type::]<Repository>, [type2::]<Repository2>

The `type` is an optional parameter. If the type is missing the default is to install from GitHub. Additional remote dependencies should be separated by commas, just like normal dependencies elsewhere in the `DESCRIPTION` file.

It is important to remember that you must always declare the dependency in the usual way, i.e. include it in `Depends`, `Imports`, `Suggests` or `Enhances`. The `Remotes` field only provides instructions on where to install the dependency from. In this example `DESCRIPTION` file, note how rlang appears in `Imports` and in `Remotes`:

    Package: xyz
    Title: What the Package Does (One Line, Title Case)
    Version: 0.0.0.9000
    Authors@R:
        person(given = "First",
               family = "Last",
               role = c("aut", "cre"),
               email = "first.last@example.com")
    Description: What the package does (one paragraph).
    License: MIT + file LICENSE
    Imports:
        rlang
    Remotes:
        r-lib/rlang

### GitHub

Because GitHub is the most commonly used unofficial package distribution in R, it’s the default:

    Remotes: hadley/testthat

You can also specify a specific hash, tag, or pull request (using the same syntax as `install_github()` if you want a particular commit. Otherwise the latest commit on the master branch is used.

    Remotes: hadley/httr@v0.4,
      klutometis/roxygen#142,
      hadley/testthat@c67018fa4970

A type of `github` can be specified, but is not required

    Remotes: github::hadley/ggplot2

### Other sources

All of the currently supported install sources are available, see the ‘See Also’ section in `?install` for a complete list.

    # GitLab
    Remotes: gitlab::jimhester/covr

    # Git
    Remotes: git::git@bitbucket.org:djnavarro/lsr.git

    # Bitbucket
    Remotes: bitbucket::sulab/mygene.r@default, djnavarro/lsr

    # Bioconductor
    Remotes: bioc::3.3/SummarizedExperiment#117513, bioc::release/Biobase

    # SVN
    Remotes: svn::https://github.com/hadley/stringr

    # URL
    Remotes: url::https://github.com/hadley/stringr/archive/master.zip

    # Local
    Remotes: local::/pkgs/testthat

    # Gitorious
    Remotes: gitorious::r-mpc-package/r-mpc-package

### CRAN submission

When you submit your package to CRAN, all of its dependencies must also be available on CRAN. For this reason, `release()` will warn you if you try to release a package with a `Remotes` field.