renv::restore() should have option to add package to library as packages are checked rather than at the end

[McKayMDavis]

If restore() fails for whatever reason during package version check and download, the process must be rerun from the beginning (hitting the URL for every package again). It would be nice if restore() could check, download and install packages into the library one at a time so that if the process fails somewhere down the line, it can be rerun without needing to hit the URLs to check every package again.

Hopefully that makes sense (and I'm not ignorantly misunderstanding something obvious to the rest of you).

[kevinushey]

I think you can achieve what you want by setting options(renv.config.install.transactional = FALSE) -- see https://rstudio.github.io/renv/reference/config.html for more details.

[McKayMDavis]

I think you can achieve what you want by setting options(renv.config.install.transactional = FALSE) -- see https://rstudio.github.io/renv/reference/config.html for more details.

Do you know if this works differently if using clean = TRUE in restore()? I have tried setting this option and restore(clean = TRUE) appears to be doing the same thing.

EDIT: It looks like this option applies more to installation time of packages than it does to the download time. From how I understand it, renv first downloads all the packages, then installs them. If this option is set to true, during install they will be installed to a temp directory, then to the library if all installs were successful. Conversely, if this option is set to false, the packages will be installed directly to the library at install time.

What I'm hoping to accomplish is for renv to download a package, then install it to the library, then proceed to the next package.

[kevinushey]

Ah, I see what you mean. Unfortunately no, there isn't a way to do this right now.

[hadley]

Now tracking in #1109