devtools::install(): Installing R package which imports another package that is stored locally

I am trying to build R packages locally simply to standardize my code for my own benefit. I've no intention to post on CRAN or GitHub. What I would like to do is import packages I've already developed into a new package I'm developing.

For example:

call the first package pack_a and the second package pack_b.
pack_a does not have any dependencies and installs without any issues.
pack_b is dependent on pack_a so pack_a is referenced in the DESCRIPTION file of pack_b under the imports tag.

The problem I'm facing is that when I install pack_b (using devtools::install()) the following error comes up:

Skipping 1 unavailable package: pack_a

After looking through the code of devtools on GitHub it appears that it is looking on CRAN for the required packages using available.packages(). Of course my pack_a is not on CRAN so it fails to find it and then pack_b fails to install. I was hoping it would first check if pack_a is already installed in my default library and therefore not even try to re-install it.

So my question comes down to:

How do I specify where to find pack_a on my local drive when installing pack_b? And if that's not possible is there a switch to turn off installation of required packages during install?

A similar question was asked before and I'm not entirely sure but I think one of the suggestions was to add your local path to the repos argument of install.packages(). This did not work for me however.

Previous similar question: R package which imports SparkR (not on CRAN)

Any guidance would be much appreciated.

Solution

I'm not entirely sure why you are having this issue without more details, as I do exactly as you describe for my own packages (both also not on CRAN) and have no issues.

Having said that, a simple solution if you know for sure that pack_a is installed before you install pack_b is to run:

devtools::install(dependencies = FALSE)