R：require（foo，lib.loc = bar）不会将lib.loc = bar转发给依赖项

Question

I have a separate library folder. I installed ks as follows:

> install.packages('ks', lib='packages')

  There is a binary version available (and will be
  installed) but the source version is later:
   binary source
ks  1.9.2  1.9.4

also installing the dependencies 'KernSmooth', 'misc3d', 'mvtnorm', 'rgl', 'multi cool'

Now, I want to load these packages.

> require(ks, lib.loc='packages')
Loading required package: ks
Failed with error:  'package 'KernSmooth' required by 'ks' could not be found'

That is, require finds ks but not KernSmooth - because it is not trying to load KernSmooth from packages . I can load it manually:

> require(KernSmooth, lib.loc='packages')
Loading required package: KernSmooth
KernSmooth 2.23 loaded
Copyright M. P. Wand 1997-2009
Warning message:
package 'KernSmooth' was built under R version 3.1.2 

I can try to require(ks, lib.loc='packages) again, but then it will tell me that the next package, misc3d is also not loaded yet.

Do I have to manually load all the dependencies from my library folder? I expected this to work automatically, ie if I require(foo, bar) , foo will also try to load its dependencies from bar .

Answer 1

The function .libPaths is used to get and set the paths where R looks for packages. If you do the following it should work just fine.

install.packages('ks', lib='packages')

.libPaths("packages")
require(ks)

In fact, if you plan on using "packages" a lot you can even set it before installing, which makes all your new packages go there by default.

.libPaths("packages")
.libPaths()

 [1] "/home/christofer/packages" "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library" [3] "/usr/lib/R/site-library" "/usr/lib/R/library" 

install.packages('ks')

 Installing package into '/home/christofer/packages' (as 'lib' is unspecified) ... 

require(ks)