Installing subdirectory packages from github fails with pak and : notation

[jashapiro]

When using renv::install() with options(renv.config.pak.enabled = TRUE) and a package that is nested within a GitHub subdirectory, the package fails to install.

I created a very small test repo to demonstrate this issue, which can be demonstrated with the following code:

options(renv.config.pak.enabled = TRUE)
renv::install("jashapiro/nestedpak:mypak")

This yields the following error/backtrace:

Error: 
! error in pak subprocess
Caused by error: 
! Could not solve package dependencies:
* jashapiro/nestedpak:mypak: ! pkgdepends resolution error for jashapiro/nestedpak:mypak.
Caused by error: 
! Can't find GitHub repo jashapiro/nestedpak:mypak.
---
Backtrace:
1. renv::install("jashapiro/nestedpak:mypak")
2. renv:::renv_pak_install(packages = packages, library = libpaths, type = type, …
3. pak$pkg_install(pkg = packages, lib = lib, ask = prompt, upgrade = TRUE)
4. pak:::remote(function(...) get("pkg_install_make_plan", asNamespace("pak"))(...), …
5. err$throw(res$error)
---
Subprocess backtrace:
1. base::withCallingHandlers(cli_message = function(msg) { …
2. get("pkg_install_make_plan", asNamespace("pak"))(...)
3. prop$stop_for_solution_error()
4. private$plan$stop_for_solve_error()
5. pkgdepends:::pkgplan_stop_for_solve_error(self, private)
6. base::throw(new_error("Could not solve package dependencies:\n", msg, …
7. | base::signalCondition(cond)
8. global (function (e) …

The following code does work as expected:

options(renv.config.pak.enabled = FALSE)
renv::install("jashapiro/nestedpak:mypak")

as does:

pak::pak("mypak=jashapiro/nestedpak/mypak")

While the renv documentation says that subdirectories in git repositories should be separated by :, I did note that using a / as below does also work:

options(renv.config.pak.enabled = TRUE)
renv::install("jashapiro/nestedpak/mypak")

─ Session info ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 setting  value
 version  R version 4.4.1 (2024-06-14)
 os       macOS 15.0
 system   aarch64, darwin20
 ui       RStudio
 language (EN)
 collate  en_US.UTF-8
 ctype    en_US.UTF-8
 tz       America/New_York
 date     2024-10-10
 rstudio  2024.09.0+375 Cranberry Hibiscus (desktop)
 pandoc   3.4 @ /Users/josh/.pixi/bin/pandoc

─ Packages ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 package     * version date (UTC) lib source
 cli           3.6.2   2023-12-11 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 gitcreds      0.1.2   2022-09-08 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 pak           0.8.0   2024-08-26 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
 renv          1.0.10  2024-10-05 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
 rstudioapi    0.16.0  2024-03-24 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 sessioninfo   1.2.2   2021-12-06 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)

[kevinushey]

Thanks! I've made a change in renv that should improve the situation here, and have also asked the pak maintainer whether the renv-style remote declaration here could also be supported.