Download package zip/tar.gz file without installing

Question

I am looking for a function, that downloads an r package zip/tar.gz file (given its name) without installing it.

Basically install.packages(), but I want to keep the zip files at a given directory.

I did not find a way to build the URL myself given the package Name, but there seems to be one, since install.packages() works that way.

Answer 1

Using download.packages:

download.packages(pkgs = "ggplot2", destdir = "/path/to/my/libs")

---

Or we can get the url manually using available.packages:

myPackage <- "ggplot2"
p <- available.packages()

myPackageUrl <- paste0(
  p[ rownames(p) == myPackage, "Repository"], "/",
  myPackage, "_",
  p[ rownames(p) == myPackage, "Version"], ".tar.gz")

myPackageUrl
# [1] "https://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/ggplot2_2.2.1.tar.gz"

# then download
download.file(url = myPackageUrl,
              destfile = paste0("/path/to/my/libs", "/",
              basename(myPackageUrl)))