How to install a particular tagged commit of an R package

Question

I have a personal R package with helper functions that I use in various projects. However, I would like to get a project working with a particular version of the project and then keep adding code. I understand I could do this with branches, but I'd prefer to do it with commit tags.

Looking at the documentation for devtools::install_git it seems that if I tag a commit then I should be able to install that particular commit, but that is not working for me.

This is a picture showing that I have a commit tagged "v0.0.1"

But attempting to install it gives me this:

devtools::install_git(url = 'http://<username>@<company stash url>/scm/preamp.git', branch = 'v0.0.1')

# > Downloading git repo http://<username>@<company stash url>/scm/preamp.git
# > Error in .local(object, ...) : 'v0.0.1' did not match any branch

My R session information:

> sessionInfo()
R version 3.2.3 (2015-12-10)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0 (64-bit)
Running under: OS X 10.11.1 (El Capitan)

locale:
[1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] parallel  splines   stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
 [1] tidyr_0.5.1                 lazyeval_0.2.0              assertthat_0.1             
 [4] beepr_1.2                   preamp_0.1                  stringr_1.0.0              
 [7] readr_0.2.2                 lubridate_1.5.6             xgboost_0.4-3              
[10] magrittr_1.5                dplyr_0.5.0                 jsonlite_1.0               
[13] httr_1.2.1                  rvdata_0.1.0                RODBC_1.3-12               
[19] XML_3.98-1.4                reshape2_1.4.1              ggplot2_2.1.0              
[22] DT_0.1                      infotheo_1.2.0              RMySQL_0.10.9              
[25] ROCR_1.0-7                  gplots_2.17.0               gtools_3.5.0               
[28] gbm_2.1.1                   lattice_0.20-33             survival_2.38-3            
[31] plyr_1.8.4                  sqldf_0.4-10                RSQLite_1.0.0              
[34] DBI_0.4-1                   gsubfn_0.6-6                proto_0.3-10               
[37] coreFunctions_0.1.0         devtools_1.10.0            

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] tcltk_3.2.3        colorspace_1.2-6   htmltools_0.3.5    chron_2.3-47       withr_1.0.1       
 [6] audio_0.1-5        munsell_0.4.3      gtable_0.2.0       caTools_1.17.1     htmlwidgets_0.6   
[11] memoise_1.0.0      curl_0.9.7         Rcpp_0.12.5        KernSmooth_2.23-15 scales_0.4.0      
[16] gdata_2.17.0       digest_0.6.9       stringi_1.1.1      grid_3.2.3         tools_3.2.3       
[21] bitops_1.0-6       tibble_1.1         Matrix_1.2-3       data.table_1.9.6   R6_2.1.2          
[26] git2r_0.13.1 

Answer 1

From that screenshot, it looks like your package may be on GitHub? Have you been able to use install_github to install a certain release of a package? In that function, you specify a commit/tag/branch with ref, like so:

> library(devtools)
> install_github("hadley/lubridate", ref = "v1.6.0")
Using GitHub PAT from envvar GITHUB_PAT
Downloading GitHub repo hadley/[email protected]
from URL https://api.github.com/repos/hadley/lubridate/zipball/v1.6.0
Installing lubridate
'/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/bin/R' --no-site-file --no-environ --no-save --no-restore --quiet CMD INSTALL  \
  '/private/var/folders/0w/prb4hnss2gn1p7y34qb2stw00000gp/T/RtmpZcDif6/devtools3b442dfebb82/hadley-lubridate-d986d4b'  \
  --library='/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.3/Resources/library' --install-tests 

* installing *source* package ‘lubridate’ ...
** libs
clang -I/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/include -DNDEBUG  -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/include/freetype2 -I/opt/X11/include    -fPIC  -Wall -mtune=core2 -g -O2  -c datetime.c -o datetime.o
clang -I/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/include -DNDEBUG  -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/include/freetype2 -I/opt/X11/include    -fPIC  -Wall -mtune=core2 -g -O2  -c period.c -o period.o
clang -I/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/include -DNDEBUG  -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/include/freetype2 -I/opt/X11/include    -fPIC  -Wall -mtune=core2 -g -O2  -c tparse.c -o tparse.o
clang -I/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/include -DNDEBUG  -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/include/freetype2 -I/opt/X11/include    -fPIC  -Wall -mtune=core2 -g -O2  -c utils.c -o utils.o
clang -dynamiclib -Wl,-headerpad_max_install_names -undefined dynamic_lookup -single_module -multiply_defined suppress -L/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/lib -L/usr/local/lib -o lubridate.so datetime.o period.o tparse.o utils.o -F/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/.. -framework R -Wl,-framework -Wl,CoreFoundation
installing to /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.3/Resources/library/lubridate/libs
** R
** data
*** moving datasets to lazyload DB
** inst
** tests
** preparing package for lazy loading
** help
*** installing help indices
** building package indices
** installing vignettes
** testing if installed package can be loaded
* DONE (lubridate)