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.

GitHub

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

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.

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

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.