In general, don't do this. Most of the time, Code Ocean's available package managers will be simple and quick to use.

You may need to use the postInstall script, however, if you:

need to install packages in a very specific order;
build packages that are no longer on CRAN (installing them from archives);
add parameters to devtools::install_github() , such as subdir= .

This help article includes some code snippets and an example that may help.

Set helpful options

At the top of your script, put the following:

echo "options(repos ='https://cran.rstudio.com/', \
  unzip = 'internal', \
  download.file.method ='libcurl', \
  Ncpus = parallel::detectCores() )" >> /etc/R/Rprofile.site

This will address a variety of installation issues you'd have otherwise (likely) encountered. (You don't need to use the official CRAN mirror.)

Set the tar command

In your Rscript command(s), include Sys.setenv(TAR = '/bin/tar'); .

Write everything as one string of commands

To avoid setting the same parameters multiple times, string R commands together with the delimiting character ; a \ character will allow multi-line commands. For instance, your final script might look like:


#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -ex
echo "options(repos ='https://cran.rstudio.com/', \
  unzip = 'internal', \
  download.file.method ='libcurl', \
  Ncpus = parallel::detectCores() )" >> /etc/R/Rprofile.site 

Rscript -e "Sys.setenv(TAR = '/bin/tar'); \
   install.packages('devtools'); \
   devtools::install_version('dplyr'); \
   devtools::install_version('emmeans'); \
   devtools::install_version('furrr')"

This script sets the necessary options and then installs packages all at once.

Further questions or issues?

Please write to us at support@codeocean.com or via live chat, and we'll be happy to assist.