Use renv for private GitLab package

Question

I have a local GitLab account with an R package that can be installed by:

devtools::install_git( 
  url = "http://my-gitlab/my-projects/package",
  credentials = git2r::cred_user_pass("user", "pass")
)

When I run renv::init() the package source is unknown. The getting started article does give details about how to setup functions to deal with private repos but I can't figure it out for GitLab when using devtools and git2r::cred_user_pass . I could store GIT_USER and GIT_PASSWORD in an .Renviron file but I'm not sure how to force the init function to user devtools::install_git with those credentials. I did try but then I get an error:

fatal: could not read Username for 'http://my-gitlab': No such device or address

All the example options they provide use a GitLab token for authentication:

# use a named list directly
options(renv.auth = list(
  MyPackage = list(GITHUB_PAT = "<pat>")
))

Perhaps there is a better way to install from a local GitLab repo that will work better with renv ?

Answer 1

When I run renv::init() the package source is unknown.

renv infers a package's source based on its DESCRIPTION file, which (for custom remotes) is usually annotated post-hoc by the install function itself. I suspect install_git() is not annotating the package in one of the ways expected by renv , and so renv is unable to infer the package source.

You could try and confirm this by checking the DESCRIPTION file; eg a quick way to dump its contents would be:

writeLines(readLines(system.file("DESCRIPTION", package = <package>)))

and check for fields like RemoteType: git to see if the package source has indeed been annotated.

---

For what it's worth, it looks like devtools::install_git() delegates to remotes::install_git() , and default Git credentials can be set via the remotes.git_credentials option. For example:

options(remotes.git_credentials = git2r::cred_user_pass("user", "pass"))

---

Ultimately though, renv relies on the use of a private access token (accessed via the GITLAB_PAT environment variable for GitLab) in order to authenticate with private repositories.

Are you able to successfully install the package using renv::install() with GITLAB_PAT set? For example:

Sys.setenv(GITLAB_PAT = <...>)
renv::install("gitlab::user/project")

This is the workflow I would recommend, and should also be supported by the remotes / devtools packages out-of-the-box.

Answer 2

For anyone else having the same problem, this worked for me (see here ):

• Create a PAT in GITLAB making sure to set the SCOPE to api . Note: I'm not sure this has to be 'api' I didn't check all options but it worked for me
• Set the PAT as a env variable using Sys.setenv(GITLAB_PAT = <...>)
• Set the gitlab host server as an option using options(renv.config.gitlab.host = "http://my-gitlab-server") . Note: I had to include "http://" to get it working.
• Run renv::install("gitlab::project/package")
• This did not work for me: renv::install("gitlab@my-gitlab-server::project/package")