install private R package in docker file

Question

I am trying to use Docker and ShinyProxy for the first time and I am struggling a lot at the very beginning of the process.

I developed some shiny apps that work well locally and I am thinking about deploying them in some articles of my website.

Those shiny apps use 2 packages that I have coded myself and that are located locally on my computer.

How can I install those private R packages in my Dockerfile so that the 'container' will have access to them???

I have seen tons of examples installing packages from CRAN, which I have no problem with. However, I cannot find the way to install my own packages from a local repository.

At the moment, I have a folder called 'DockerEC' with the following files:

'App.R'
'run_app.R'
'installpackages.R'
'Dockerfile'

In my local shiny apps, I install those packages simply using:

install.packages("/Users/name/Documents/R/Package_NAME", repos = NULL, type="source")

I wrote this line of code in my installpackages.R file but I cannot Run this file as I get an error: 'no such file or directory'.

I used

COPY /Users/name/Documents/R/DockerEC/installpackages.R /Users/name/Documents/R/DockerEC/installpackages.R 

and then

RUN Rscript /Users/name/Documents/R/DockerEC/installpackages.R  

in my docker file but don't get why I am not finding the file?

Anyone has a concrete example of a way of installing private R package in the dockerfile? I am missing a concrete example to understand how to do it...

Answer 1

Try the Dockerfile below, it works for me:

FROM rocker/r-ver:3.6.1

RUN mkdir ./private_pkgs

COPY /Users/name/Documents/R/your_package.tar.gz ./private_pkgs/your_package.tar.gz

RUN R -e "install.packages('private_pkgs/your_package.tar.gz', repos = NULL, type = 'source')"