Non-standard Remotes package INLA in R package

[caldwellst]

I have a package that Imports INLA, which is not hosted on CRAN or a standard GitHub repository. There are multiple SO questions detailing how to install the package on a personal machine, such as this, or even mentions it as a dependency in a package.

The two ways that are typically recommended to install on a personal machine are:

Direct from INLA website

install.packages("INLA",repos=c(getOption("repos"),INLA="https://inla.r-inla-download.org/R/stable"), dep=TRUE)

From the GitHub host

devtools::install_github(repo = "https://github.com/hrue/r-inla", ref = "stable", subdir = "rinla", build = FALSE)

Now, these are fine for personal machines, but don't work in the DESCRIPTION files Remotes: section.

If we do url::https://inla.r-inla-download.org/R/stable, this gives an error that the file extension isn't recognized.

 Error: Error: Failed to install 'unknown package' from URL:
  Don't know how to decompress files with extension 

If we do github::hrue/r-inla, I am unaware of how to pass (or if it's even possible) the ref, subdir, and build arguments in the DESCRIPTION file.

Previous packages used a read only mirror of the INLA code that was hosted on GitHub, solely for this purpose, at this repo and then just using github::inbo/INLA. However, this repository is out of date.

Current solution

What I'm doing instead is to directly reference the tarball hosted on the main webpage.

url::https://inla.r-inla-download.org/R/stable/src/contrib/INLA_21.02.23.tar.gz

This solution works, and passes CI as well as the machines are able to install and load from there. The only issue is that I need to periodically update the static link to this tarball, and would prefer to reference the stable build, either directly from the INLA website as above, or the hrue/inla repo with those other arguments passed. Is there a way to achieve this in the DESCRIPTION file?

[maelle]

@caldwellst! Now that's an interesting riddle to which I do not have a complete solution but wanted to share my notes.

• Regarding the remotes package, in DESCRIPTION one can indicate the ref and subdir (Remotes: hrue/r-inla/rinla@stable) but not other arguments.
  I.e. I created a small package with

Imports:
  INLA
Remotes:
  hrue/r-inla/rinla@stable

in DESCRIPTION. remotes::install_deps() failed, remotes::install_deps(build = FALSE) worked.

• I started wondering whether it'd help to use R-universe, but I don't think it'd be better than the solution in one of the SO posts you shared, where one has to indicate which repo to use.

Might I ask why you want all installation metadata to be in DESCRIPTION, by the way?