Extra Binary R packages for the Homebrew R (Cask)

¶ Extra Binary R packages for the Homebrew R (Cask) Yihui Xie 2022-10-06 NOTE: This project is no longer maintained. If anyone wants to resurrect it, please feel free to let me know.
¶ The repository https://macos.rbind.io (Github repo) provides some binary R packages for the Homebrew (cask) version of base R that are currently missing on CRAN, in a similar spirit as the “CRAN extras” repository for Windows: https://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/RWin/. If you are using the Homebrew version of R on the latest version of macOS, you may set the `repos` option in R first:	`# you may do this in your ~/.Rprofile so you don't have to do it every time options(repos = c( CRANextra = 'https://macos.rbind.io', CRAN = 'https://cran.rstudio.com' ))`
¶ Note that the `CRAN` repository does not have to be `https://cran.rstudio.com`. It can be any other CRAN mirror.
¶ Then you will be able to install some binary packages with `install.packages()`, e.g.,	`install.packages(c('cairoDevice', 'RGtk2'))`
¶ To see which packages are available, use the function `available.packages()` in R:	`rownames(available.packages( repos = 'https://macos.rbind.io', type = 'binary' ))`
¶ Why creating this repository?	`character(0)`
¶ CRAN maintainers have provided binaries for most R packages (big thanks!), but a few have still been missing so far. This repository serves as a complement to the official CRAN respository, and provides a subset of the binary R packages that are unavailable on CRAN.
¶ To use this repository, you are expected to install the cask `r` from Homebrew (instead of the formula `brew install r`):	`brew install --cask r`
¶ The R installer you manually downloaded and installed from CRAN should also work, but it is not tested here. Scope of the repository The repository https://macos.rbind.io does not provide binary packages of these packages: Packages of which the binaries already exist on CRAN (the package names are obtained as the differences between `available.packages(type = 'source')` and `available.packages(type = 'binary')`). Packages that depend on BioConductor packages. Packages of which the system dependencies are not available in Homebrew (e.g., `rggobi`) or too difficult to install (e.g., `kmcudaR`). The repository is automatically updated daily from Github Action, which means if a new version of a source R package appears on CRAN, its binary package should be available in this repository in less than 24 hours (if it satisfies the above conditions). Instructions on system dependencies
¶ Some packages only require system dependencies at the build time, e.g., the R package xml2 requires the brew package `libxml2` when building it from source, but `libxml2` is no longer needed once the binary package is built (after `install.packages('xml2')`, you can remove `libxml2`). However, some packages still need the system dependencies at the run time, such as RGtk2 (you cannot `brew uninstall gtk+`). To install the system dependencies after installing a binary R package from `macos.rbind.io`, you may use `xfun:::brew_dep()` to query the dependencies and install them, e.g.,	`install.packages('xfun') system2('brew', c('install', xfun:::brew_dep('RGtk2')))`
¶ Disclaimer My knowledge of building binary R packages is fairly limited, so please consider this repository as experimental before real experts join me. I'd welcome anyone to help with this project. In the same spirit of Homebrew, I really wish this will become a project maintained by the community instead of me alone. License The source code in the Github repo is licensed under MIT. For the R packages, please consult their DESCRIPTION files for their specific licenses. The copyright of these packages belongs to their original authors. You may obtain the source code of these R packages from CRAN if you wish to.