Package Repositories

You can find or store packages in a variety of repositories. You can create your own in-house repository using the drat package.

You can download a package from a public repository, such as Posit, CRAN, or TERR Archive Network (TRAN) repository, or you could use the drat package to create and maintain an in-house repository that is managed by your organization's package curator.

Note: Spotfire does not warrant, deliver, or support code or other material provided by the R Project for Statistical Computing, including but not limited to development tools and packages, and such code and other material does not constitute a part of TERR. Such material therefore is not within the scope of your license for TERR. Download and use of such material is solely at your own discretion and subject to the free open source license terms applicable to such material. Spotfire recommends that you consult a legal professional concerning compliance with any free open source license terms applicable to such material, particularly if you plan to engage in redistribution of TERR and/or such material. (Please note that TERR may be redistributed solely pursuant to a license that expressly grants such redistribution rights.)

Public repositories

You can download open-source packages from a repository, and then use the functions in the package in your data functions in Spotfire. Be sure to review the list of differences between the TERR engine, available from the TERR landing page. Also review the limitations and considerations.

TRAN packages

A number of popular CRAN packages occasionally require customization to work with TERR. Spotfire hosts a package network, TRAN, where you can find these customized packages. Individual users can download these packages using the TERR console application by calling the function install.packages(). Optionally, these customized packages can be built into a Spotfire SPK and placed on a Spotfire Server to be available to Spotfire users throughout your organization.

Note:

Some packages customized and placed on TRAN require other packages not available on TRAN. Some of these packages cannot be installed using the TERR function install.packages, so the TRAN package cannot be successfully installed. If you encounter this situation, try building and installing the package using open-source R.

Company repositories

One skilled package developer in your organization should have the role of package curator to oversee the package version integrity within the company’s package repository, whether these are packages downloaded and tested from a public repository or developed internally and kept in a CRAN-like in-house repository.

One easy way to establish and maintain a company repository is with the drat package, which is available in the Posit and CRAN repositories. Using the drat package, you can create an in-house repository (on either a web server or a network share), you can upload packages to the in-house repository, and you can install packages from the in-house repository. For more information on using drat, install it into your TERR or open-source R console application, and then refer to its language reference and vignettes.

For more information about installing existing packages, see Installation options for packages.