When running install.packages("any_package") on windows I get the message :
trying URL
'somepath.zip'
I would like to get this path without downloading, is it possible ?
In other terms I'd like to get the CRAN link to the windows binary of the latest release (the best would actually be to be able to call a new function with the same parameters as install.packages and get the proper url(s) as an output).
I would need a way that works from the R console (no manual checking of the CRAN page etc).
I am not sure if this is what you are looking for. This build the URL from the repository information and building the file name of the list of available packages.
#get repository name
repos<- getOption("repos")
#Get url for the binary package
#contrib.url(repos, "both")
contriburl<-contrib.url(repos, "binary")
#"https://mirrors.nics.utk.edu/cran/bin/windows/contrib/3.5"
#make data.frame of avaialbe packages
df<-as.data.frame(available.packages())
#find package of interest
pkg <- "tidyr" #example
#ofinterest<-grep(pkg, df$Package)
ofinterest<-match(pkg, df$Package) #returns a single value
#assemble name, assumes it is always a zip file
name<-paste0(df[ofinterest,]$Package, "_", df[ofinterest,]$Version, ".zip")
#make final URL
finalurl<-paste0(contriburl, "/", name)