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Overriding Remote Dependencies

Sometimes packages, especially internal or still in development, have dependencies which are not widely available. In this case, the package may contain the Remotes field to describe where the installer can find these dependencies.

This is great for a lot of scenarios, for example, if you want to install the package, the installer just “knows” how to install a package.

But there are scenarios where a package is contained in a repository and the installer, including rv, still prefers the remote dependency

As discussed in prefer_repositories_for, rv has the power to prefer repositories over remotes for explicit dependencies following the conditions mentioned.

In this example, we will try to install the simple example package rv.remotes, which depends on tibble >= 3.2.0 and glue >= 1.7.0, but has remotes specified for those packages as well. First, we’ll look at how the installation would occur without additional configuration. Then, we’ll add the prefer_repositories_for field to the config file and see how it changes.

Without Additional Configuration

Section titled “Without Additional Configuration”

In the initial configuration, we start with a repository which contains tibble 3.2.1 and glue 1.8.0 and try to install the rv.remotes package from the main git branch.

rproject.toml
[project]
name = "remotes"
r_version = "4.4"


repositories = [
    { alias = "PPM", url = "https://packagemanager.posit.co/cran/2025-05-01" },
]


dependencies = [
    { name = "rv.remotes", git = "https://github.com/a2-ai/rv.remotes", branch = "main" }
]

We can see in the summary and plan that we will install tibble and glue from the specified git remote, and not from the repositories.

== System Information ==
OS: macos (arm64)
R Version: 4.4


Num Workers for Sync: 8 (8 cpus available)
Cache Location: /Users/wescummings/projects/rv-docs-playground/cache/rv


== Dependencies ==
Library: rv/library/4.4/arm64
Installed: 0/11


Package Sources:
https://github.com/a2-ai/rv.remotes: 0/1 source packages
https://github.com/tidyverse/glue: 0/1 source packages
https://github.com/tidyverse/tibble: 0/1 source packages
PPM: 0/8 binary packages




Installation Summary:
https://github.com/a2-ai/rv.remotes: 1/1 in cache (1 to compile)
https://github.com/tidyverse/glue: 1/1 in cache (1 to compile)
https://github.com/tidyverse/tibble: 1/1 in cache (1 to compile)
PPM: 8/8 to download


== Remote ==
PPM (https://packagemanager.posit.co/cran/latest): 19436 binary packages, 22462 source packages

With Configuration

Section titled “With Configuration”

Since we have packages in the repository that meet the version requirements in rv.remotes DESCRIPTION file, we can prefer the repository for those packages.

We do this by first adding it to the config file:

rproject.toml
[project]
name = "remotes"
r_version = "4.4"


repositories = [
    { alias = "PPM", url = "https://packagemanager.posit.co/cran/2025-05-01" },
]


dependencies = [
    { name = "rv.remotes", git = "https://github.com/a2-ai/rv.remotes", branch = "main" }
]


prefer_repositories_for = [
    "glue",
    "tibble",
]

We can now see that tibble and glue are not sourced from GitHub anymore and are sourced from the repository as specified.

== System Information ==
OS: macos (arm64)
R Version: 4.4


Num Workers for Sync: 8 (8 cpus available)
Cache Location: /Users/wescummings/projects/rv-docs-playground/cache/rv


== Dependencies ==
Library: rv/library/4.4/arm64
Installed: 0/12


Package Sources:
PPM: 0/11 binary packages
https://github.com/a2-ai/rv.remotes: 0/1 source packages


Installation Summary:
PPM: 11/11 to download
https://github.com/a2-ai/rv.remotes: 1/1 in cache (1 to compile)


== Remote ==
PPM (https://packagemanager.posit.co/cran/latest): 19436 binary packages, 22462 source packages