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rdockerrpy2

Preventing repeated package installation, or pre installing packages in R

I have a R script that I call from python using rpy2. It uses dplyr, doBy, and ggplot2. The script has install.packages commands for these 3 packages. Even thought the packages are already installed it still downloads, builds, and installs them, which is very time consuming. Is there a way to have it only do the install if the package is not already installed?

Also, I run in a docker container, so after the container is instantiated the packages are not there the first time the script runs. Is there a way to pre load the packages, in which case I would not need the install.packages commands for these packages and my above question would become moot.

Solution

  • I always use:

    if (!require(package)) install.packages("package")

    So if the package isn't available in the library, it will be installed.