Unable to install certain R packages from GitHub

Question

I am trying to install a package from GitHub: https://github.com/NIB-SI/seekr

However, running

devtools::install_github("ablejec/seekr")

yields the following error

Downloading GitHub repo NIB-SI/pisar@HEAD Error: Failed to install
'pisar' from GitHub:   input string 34 is invalid In addition: Warning
message: In gsub("[^/]", "", file_list) :   unable to translate
'NIB-SI-pisar-33d70bb/devel/_Welcome -<c0> R packages.URL' to a wide
string

Other people with the same setup (RStudio running on windows) are able to install this package, but I have a sneaking suspicion the error is UTF-8 related. I am able to load the package via the downloaded package as such:

library("seekr", lib.loc = "C:/localfolder/seekr")

I have filed this issue in the GitHub repo, but I have a feeling this is such a specific error that it might not be fixable in the near future.

For reference, my SessionInfo output is:

R version 4.3.0 (2023-04-21 ucrt) Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64
(64-bit) Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 19044)

Matrix products: default


locale: [1] C

time zone: Europe/Paris tzcode source: internal

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

other attached packages:  [1] seekr_0.1.0.9000 lubridate_1.9.2 
forcats_1.0.0    stringr_1.5.0    dplyr_1.1.2      purrr_1.0.1     
readr_2.1.4      tidyr_1.3.0       [9] tibble_3.2.1     ggplot2_3.4.2 
tidyverse_2.0.0  jsonlite_1.8.5  

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):  [1] generics_0.1.3   
utf8_1.2.3        stringi_1.7.12    hms_1.1.3         digest_0.6.31   
magrittr_2.0.3    timechange_0.2.0   [8] grid_4.3.0       
pkgload_1.3.2     fastmap_1.1.1     processx_3.8.1    pkgbuild_1.4.2  
sessioninfo_1.2.2 urlchecker_1.0.1  [15] ps_1.7.5         
promises_1.2.0.1  fansi_1.0.4       scales_1.2.1      cli_3.6.1       
shiny_1.7.4       rlang_1.1.1       [22] crayon_1.5.2     
ellipsis_0.3.2    munsell_0.5.0     withr_2.5.0       remotes_2.4.2   
cachem_1.0.8      devtools_2.4.5    [29] tools_4.3.0       tzdb_0.4.0 
memoise_2.0.1     colorspace_2.1-0  httpuv_1.6.11     curl_5.0.1      
vctrs_0.6.2       [36] R6_2.5.1          mime_0.12        
lifecycle_1.0.3   fs_1.6.2          htmlwidgets_1.6.2 usethis_2.2.0   
miniUI_0.1.1.1    [43] pkgconfig_2.0.3   callr_3.7.3      
pillar_1.9.0      later_1.3.1       gtable_0.3.3      glue_1.6.2      
profvis_0.3.8     [50] Rcpp_1.0.10       tidyselect_1.2.0 
rstudioapi_0.14   xtable_1.8-4      htmltools_0.5.5   compiler_4.3.0  
prettyunits_1.1.1

Answer 1

There are some non-UTF8 characters in the repo: I forked the repo and removed them. If you install pisar from jpmam1/pisar, instead of NIB-SI/pisar, i.e.

devtools::install_github("jpmam1/pisar")

Then, reinstall seekr with:

devtools::install_github("ablejec/seekr")

It should install without issue (I'll make a pull request to the NIB-SI/pisar repo if it solves your problem).