cran_parser

A tool for creating install scripts from CRAN.

Why is this tool needed?

If a package is no longer in the R cran page (this software uses sensR as the principle example of this), then you can no longer install it on new versions of R because there are no binaries for it. The issue stems even more, as you can't just install from a source file, but you have to go through and find all the sources that also don't exist (or are no longer entirely compatible with your package). This can take a long time / be arduous, so I created this short script to help download from CRAN and create an installer.

Where can I find snapshots?

A good place to go is MRAN. The default for this software is 2019-05-24 (a snapshot which has sensR).

What do I need to compile R packages?

macOS

Follow this guide to install Xcode

Windows

Install Rtools

Ubuntu

sudo apt install build-essential

The Command Line Interface

$ python cran_parser.py  -h
usage: CRAN Downloader [-h] [--package PACKAGE] [--list-packages] [--search]
                       [--source SOURCE]

Create download script for R package

options:
  -h, --help         show this help message and exit
  --package PACKAGE  The package to create the installer for
  --list-packages    List all the available packages
  --search           Search for the package name parsed to [--package]
  --source SOURCE    The CRAN homepage to use

How to search for a package

python cran_parser.py  --search --package sensr

How to make an installation script

$ python cran_parser.py  --package sensR --source "https://cran.microsoft.com/snapshot/2019-05-24"

Creates:

for (url in c("https://cran.microsoft.com/snapshot/2019-05-24/src/contrib/mvtnorm_1.0-10.tar.gz", "https://cran.microsoft.com/snapshot/2019-05-24/src/contrib/lattice_0.20-38.tar.gz", "https://cran.microsoft.com/snapshot/2019-05-24/src/contrib/Matrix_1.2-17.tar.gz", "https://cran.microsoft.com/snapshot/2019-05-24/src/contrib/survival_2.44-1.1.tar.gz", "https://cran.microsoft.com/snapshot/2019-05-24/src/contrib/lattice_0.20-38.tar.gz", "https://cran.microsoft.com/snapshot/2019-05-24/src/contrib/Matrix_1.2-17.tar.gz", "https://cran.microsoft.com/snapshot/2019-05-24/src/contrib/survival_2.44-1.1.tar.gz", "https://cran.microsoft.com/snapshot/2019-05-24/src/contrib/MASS_7.3-51.4.tar.gz", "https://cran.microsoft.com/snapshot/2019-05-24/src/contrib/TH.data_1.0-10.tar.gz", "https://cran.microsoft.com/snapshot/2019-05-24/src/contrib/lattice_0.20-38.tar.gz", "https://cran.microsoft.com/snapshot/2019-05-24/src/contrib/zoo_1.8-5.tar.gz", "https://cran.microsoft.com/snapshot/2019-05-24/src/contrib/sandwich_2.5-1.tar.gz", "https://cran.microsoft.com/snapshot/2019-05-24/src/contrib/codetools_0.2-16.tar.gz", "https://cran.microsoft.com/snapshot/2019-05-24/src/contrib/multcomp_1.4-10.tar.gz", "https://cran.microsoft.com/snapshot/2019-05-24/src/contrib/MASS_7.3-51.4.tar.gz", "https://cran.microsoft.com/snapshot/2019-05-24/src/contrib/numDeriv_2016.8-1.tar.gz", "https://cran.microsoft.com/snapshot/2019-05-24/src/contrib/sensR_1.5-1.tar.gz")) {install.packages(url, repos=NULL, method="libcurl")}

Setting up with snap

$ snapcraft --debug
$ sudo snap install jimbob88-cran-parser_0.1_multi.snap --devmode --dangerous
$ jimbob88-cran-parser.cran-parser -h