devtools::install_github failing in R4.0.03

Question

I upgraded recently to R4.0.3 and devtools::install_github no longer seems to work. Eg.

> install_github('MacoskoLab/liger')
Using github PAT from envvar GITHUB_PAT
Downloading GitHub repo MacoskoLab/liger@HEAD
Error in utils::download.file(url, path, method = method, quiet = quiet,  : 
  download from 'https://api.github.com/repos/MacoskoLab/liger/tarball/HEAD' failed

or

install_github("NathanSkene/MAGMA_Celltyping")
Using github PAT from envvar GITHUB_PAT
Downloading GitHub repo NathanSkene/MAGMA_Celltyping@HEAD
Error in utils::download.file(url, path, method = method, quiet = quiet,  : 
  download from 'https://api.github.com/repos/NathanSkene/MAGMA_Celltyping/tarball/HEAD' failed

Not entirely clear to me whether it's devtools, or utils::download.file or R itself that's gone haywire here. Any suggestions welcome!

Answer 1

Turns out that this problem was caused by the download timing out. The repository in question is quite large (it contains datasets as well as code). There is a default 60 second timeout for install_github. Increasing this made it work:

options(timeout=9999999)
install_github("NathanSkene/MAGMA_Celltyping")