Force install.packages()

Question

Is it possible to install a package in R forcefully ?

> install.packages("gsubfn")
Installing package(s) into ‘/home/sebastian/R/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu-library/2.14’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
--- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
Loading Tcl/Tk interface ... done
Warning message:
In getDependencies(pkgs, dependencies, available, lib) :
  package ‘gsubfn’ is not available (for R version 2.14.2)

In this case the package requires R >= 2.15 and I only have R 2.14.2 . Wondering whether I can do a force install .

Answer 1

Download the package from the source. Unzip it, and move the folder to the library (~/R/2.14/Library). Go to your IDE and do a library(<package_name>)

This may or may not work properly and you are most likely to get a similar warning message saying that package <name> was built under R 2.14. Ignore it. Most of the functions should work. Be warned, however, there may be some functions which spew funny output, or none at all, as they might be using some features which are not in R 2.14.

You could, however, update your R version. That, IMO, is the best way to go.