How to install stringi from local file (ABSOLUTELY no Internet Access)

r package stringi
Katya Handler picture Katya Handler · Aug 11, 2015 · Viewed 10.4k times · Source

I am working on a remote server using RStudio. This server has no access to the Internet. I would like to install the package "stringi." I have looked at this stackoverflow article, but whenever I use the command

install.packages("stringi_0.5-5.tar.gz", 
                 configure.vars="ICUDT_DIR=/my/directory/for/icudt.zip")

It simply tries to access the Internet, which it cannot do. Up until now I have been using Tools -> Install Packages -> Install from Packaged Archive File. However, due to this error, I can no longer use this method.

How can I install this package?

Answer

gagolews picture gagolews · Aug 11, 2015

If you have no internet access on local machines, you can build a distributable source package that includes all the required ICU data files (for off-line use) by omitting some relevant lines in the .Rbuildignore file. The following command sequence should do the trick:

wget https://github.com/gagolews/stringi/archive/master.zip -O stringi.zip
unzip stringi.zip
sed -i '/\/icu..\/data/d' stringi-master/.Rbuildignore
R CMD build stringi-master

Assuming the most recent development version is 1.3.1, a file named stringi_1.3.1.tar.gz is created in the current working directory. The package can now be installed (the source bundle may be propagated via scp etc.) by executing:

R CMD INSTALL stringi_1.3.1.tar.gz

or by calling install.packages("stringi_1.3.1.tar.gz", repos=NULL), from within an R session.

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