Search code examples
rgitdevtools

Install from local git repository located in a file system directory

Is it possible to use devtools::install_git() to install a package from a local git repository located in some file system directory on MS Windows?

The examples only demonstrate how to install from a web URL (e.g. install_git("git://github.com/hadley/stringr.git")).

From within a package loaded via RStudio and devtools (CTRL + SHFT + L) and under git version control (i.e., subdirectory .git exists) , I tried the following:

devtools::install_git(paste0("git://", getwd(), ".git"))

The function came back with this error:

Downloading git repo git://C:/Users/Thyson/Documents/path/to/package/packagename.git
Error in git2r::clone(x$url, bundle, progress = FALSE) : 
  Error in 'git2r_clone': Malformed URL 'git://C:/Users/Thyson/Documents/path/to/package/packagename.git'

So I'm guessing I just got the file system URL wrong?

Solution

  • I had a same problem in MS Windows before and figured it out myself. For example, if you have a local repository called "C:\path\to\pkga.git".

    devtools::install_git("C://path/to/pkga.git")

    The key is to use double slash in the path "C://path/to/pkga.git".

    Hope that works for other using MS Windows.