When install.packages fail

Last updated on 2025-07-01 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

What to do when install.packages tells me the package is not available?

Objectives

Provide explanations for this problem
Provide solutions

Installing packages can fail in many ways. The error above, is clearly caused by looking for at package name that does not exist.

The message points us in the direction of the R documentation, which is very information dense. But not very readable.

What does install.packages() do?

In order to understand what can go wrong, it is informative to understand what is happening when everything works as it should.

Running install.packages("package-name") will access one or more repositories.

These repositories are where the packages live, and the most commonly used repository is CRAN, the Comprehensive R Archive Network, which is part of the basic R-infrastructure. But other repositories exist, and we can specify them either in general settings in R, or by specifying them in install.packages using the repos argument.

Most repositories will place restrictions on what packages are allowed. CRAN fx runs a set of tests, making sure a new package is documented and does more or less what it claims to do. Updated packages are also checked to ensure any changes does not break stuff. The checks are continously improving, so a package that passed the tests last year, might no longer live up to the standard.

In order to share the load, CRAN, and some other repositories, have “mirrors”, sites that have the same packages stored, but located in different countries. The internet is fast, but it is quicker to download large amounts of data from a location close to you, rather than on the other side of the globe.

From each repository, install.packages will retrieve a list, actually a matrix, of available packages. In the matrix there will be meta data on dependencies (other packages the package need in order to work), licens, etc.

It will then search for the name of the package you provided in install.packages, check if you have the depencies installed, and download the package from the specified location to your computer.

Packages comes in many forms, but a major difference is wether they are compiled or not. It can come in “source code” - code that is basically text that we can read. Sometimes this is R-code, but often it is written in C or Fortran. Your computer is not able to run this directly.

If the package comes compiled, your computer can run it directly. And install.packages will download a compiled version that matches your computer. Something compiled for MacOS will not be able to run on a Windows computer and vice-versa.

If the package is not compiled, or a version for your operating system does not exist, install.packages will initiate a compilation on your computer.

The package, either precompiled, or recently compiled will then be placed on your computer. By default in the first entry in your .libPaths() variable. We do not usually bother tinkering with that.

You have now downloaded and installed a package in R.

But how can this go wrong, and what can we do to fix it?

1. You can’t spell

Well, you probably can. But packages are not always spelled as you would expect. The correct spelling is defined as the way the package name is spelled, and if you make a typo relative to that, install.packages will not find the correct package name. Also, package names are case sensitive. This is an annoying mistake to make, and in our experience surprisingly difficult to locate.

2. You did not look in the right repository.

By default install.packages() looks in CRAN. But sometimes we need packages that live in other repositories.

R

setRepositories()

allow us to chose one or more of the repositories that R knows about:

What if we need a repository our local R-installation already know? No worries, a function for that exist:

R

setRepositories(addURLs =
                c(CRANxtras = "https://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/RWin"))

2.5 The package is not in the repositories you have selected:

This is almost the same problem. We can get at list, or rather a matrix of all the available packages in the repositories we have selected:

R

ap <- available.packages()

In this example we find 22371 packages.

Rather than viewing all of them, it is better to test if the package we are looking for is actually available:

R

"tidyverse" %in% ap

OUTPUT

[1] TRUE

It is, but remember the point about spelling and case sensitivity.

3. Repository is unavailable

If you get this message:

Warning: unable to access index for repository

The selected repository is probably currently unavailable. you can try again later, or run chooseCRANmirror() to chose another mirror, and then try again.

4. Maybe it is not actually a package you want

Many are the times we have tried to run library(diamonds) followed by install.packages("diamonds") only to remember that diamonds is a dataset in the ggplot2 package. Run data() to get a list of all the datasets available in your current setup.

5. R is out of date.

The package you want might depend on a more recent version of R. Or another package.

Take a look at the list of available packages we got earlier:

R

ap["baguette", "Depends"]

OUTPUT

[1] "parsnip (>= 1.0.0), R (>= 3.6)"

If install.packages("baguette") fails, start by making sure that you have a version of parsnip installed that meets the requirements. And also make sure your installed version of R is adequate.

Depending on your setup, the easy way to update R is:

R

library(installr)
updateR()

6. The package might be out of date

For example it could be archived. If a package is no longer maintained, and do no longer pass the automatic checks in the repositories, it will be archived. However, we can still access it:

R

library(remotes)
install_version("tidyverse", "1.2.3")

An archived package may also be found on github (or another version control system). This is especially useful if the package is actually still maintained but have been archived by CRAN because any error in the automatic checks have not yet been fixed:

R

library(remotes)
install_github("vqv/ggbiplot")

7. A binary for your OS may not exist

CRAN and other repositories will often compile a package to a selection of operating systems. Some packages require additional software to compile, that are not available to CRAN for at given operating system. And some packages are not available as binaries at all.

In this case you will have to compile the package yourself. Do not worry, R will handle it for you.

If you are on windows, you will need to have RTools installed.

On MacOS you will need Xcode

On a Linux machine you will have to compile most packages, but your operating system have access to what it need to do this already.

Havin prepared by installing Rtools or Xcode, you can now run:

R

install.packages("dplyr", type = "source")

If you do need additional software, it will be mentioned under “NeedsCompilation” on cran.r-project.org for the specific package.

8. The package is on GitHub. Or another location.

This is similar to the situation where we have to get a package from github because it has been archived on CRAN. It requires the remotes package, and knowledge about where on GitHub the package resides:

R

library(remotes)
install_github("vqv/ggbiplot")

Other similar services exist, and remotes provides function for the more popular.

9. There is no source version of the package

A binary version may be available, but a source version is not. Why this should cause problems is a mystery, but it happens.

This can be solved by asking install.packages to stop checking for access to a source version, by running:

options(install.packages.check.source = "no")

Remember to change the option back to “yes” after installing the offending package.

10. The package is in a non-standard repository.

CRAN is the major repository. BioC a close second. But others exist. If the repository is reasonably compliant with CRAN, install.packages("Rbbg", repos = "http://r.nonstandard.repo.org") will work. Otherwise you will have to read the documentation of the non-standard repo.

11. the repo is down or does not exist.

You will typically get something like Warning: unable to access index for repository

Running this install.packages("quux", repos = "https://does.not.exist/CRAN") will fail because “does.not.exist” does not exist. Double check that the repo actually exist (or that you have no typos in the name). If it does exist, it might be a temporary problem and can, maybe, be solved by trying again later.

12. The repo is blocking you

Besides being blocked because you are not allowed to access the repo, this can be caused by the repo throttling accesss. It often happens with installations from GitHub, if a lot op people try to install at the same time from the same location. In this case you will have to wait.

Key Points

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