Log of install.packages()

Question

Does R by default store a log of the installation messages anywhere? If not, is there a way to have it log them on a file?

Sometimes I let R install various pacakges automatically, eg

install.packages("caret", dependencies=c("Depends", "Suggests"))

which can take hours and the installation log does not fit on the scroll buffer, so I can't see how the installation proceeded. It would be great if I can have R save this log somewhere (in addition to showing it on the terminal)

Answer 1

If you only need to know how the installation went (warnings and errors), the following may be sufficient for your needs:

sink("sink.txt")
install.packages("caret", dependencies=c("Depends", "Suggests"))
sink()