Install “old package” (not available on cran web site) on R 2.15 on OS X 10.8

Question

I'm new to R and I'm trying to install the packages that are listed on this web page: http://web.cbio.uct.ac.za/~renaud/CRAN but that are now available on cran website anymore.

When I try to use the "package installer", R is looking for an osx directory that does not exist on this web site. When I download the files on my hard drive either as a .tar file or uncompress the file and then compress it as a .tgz file, I get this error message:

Error: file ‘/Users/XXXXXX/Downloads/NMF.tgz’ is not an OS X binary package.

Any hint on how to install this package on R, and/or what is the way to (re)compile it, so it would be recognized by R on OS X 10.8?

Answer 1

I had this problem too, and found a remedy at: http://www.highstat.com/Installing%20Library%20Packages%20that%20are%20not%20on%20the%20CRAN%20Website.pdf

In essence, you can de-compress the .tgz file, and (on a Mac) put the resulting directory in the following location: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/library

Then load the package into R using the standard library() command.

As the referenced PDF pointed out, this approach may not work if the package includes source, but it's worth trying for you, unless you're certain it does contain source.