An R function to update packages

I’m a big fan of the new R IDE called Positron but unlike RStudio, it doesn’t yet have a built-in way to update out-of-date R packages. So I took a look at the available functions for checking and updating packages and wrote my own function.

The first function is old.packages(). It checks which packages are outdated and displays this information as a matrix. It doesn’t look particularly pretty and also includes some information that isn’t very important (in most cases).

The second function is update.packages(). This function can be used to update out-of-date packages, either one by one or all at once, or via some kind of user interface (although that didn’t work for me).

I wrote a custom function that combines both old.packages() and update.packages(). It more clearly displays which packages are outdated and then prompts you to decide whether to update them:

update_packages <- function() {
  old.packages() |>
    tibble::as_tibble() |>
    dplyr::rename(
      package = Package,
      installed = Installed,
      available = ReposVer
    ) |>
    dplyr::select(package, installed, available) |>
    print()

  input <- readline(prompt = "Update packages? Yes/no ")

  if (input %in% c("y", "yes", "Yes")) {
    update.packages(ask = FALSE)
  }
}

The function roughly mimics how I use the graphical user interface of RStudio to update packages. Feel free to copy it directly into your projects, save it as a snippet, or include it in a (personal) R package.

I’ve added a keyboard shortcut to run this code, using the following settings in keybindings.json:

{
  "key": "cmd+p cmd+u",
  "command": "workbench.action.executeCode.console",
  "when": "editorTextFocus",
  "args": {
    "langId": "r",
    "code": "old.packages() |> tibble::as_tibble() |> dplyr::rename(package = Package,installed = Installed,available = ReposVer) |>dplyr::select(package, installed, available) |>print(n = Inf);input <- readline(prompt = 'Update packages? Yes/no ');if (input %in% c('y', 'yes', 'Yes')) {update.packages(ask = FALSE)}",
    "focus": false
  }
}

This means I can press CMD + P, followed by CMD + U, to update the packages. Nifty!