Installing Archived R Packages No Longer Available on CRAN - Domino

Version/Environment (if relevant):

All Domino versions

Issue:

RStudio CRAN repository has removed a number of packages, which are now only available in the CRAN archive at https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/. When attempting to install such a package using the standard install.packages() command, R returns a warning that the package is no longer available. For example:

> install.packages('RSQLServer')
Installing package into "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library"
(as "lib" is unspecified)
Warning in install.packages :
package "RSQLServer" is not available for this version of R

A version of this package for your version of R might be available elsewhere,
see the ideas at
https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-patched/R-admin.html#Installing-packages

Root Cause:

The package has been removed from the active CRAN repository and is no longer returned by the standard install.packages() function. The package still exists in the CRAN archive but must be installed directly from the archive URL using a source-based install method.

Resolution:

Install the package directly from the CRAN archive using the following code (replace the URL and filename with the specific package version needed):

> url <- "https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/RSQLServer/RSQLServer_0.3.0.tar.gz"
> pkgFile <- "RSQLServer_0.3.0.tar.gz"
> download.file(url = url, destfile = pkgFile)
trying URL 'https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/RSQLServer/RSQLServer_0.3.0.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 633887 bytes (619 KB)
==================================================
downloaded 619 KB

> install.packages(pkgs=pkgFile, type="source", repos=NULL)
Installing package into "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library"
(as "lib" is unspecified)
* installing *source* package "RSQLServer" ...
** package "RSQLServer" successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
** using staged installation
** R
** inst
** byte-compile and prepare package for lazy loading
** help
*** installing help indices
** building package indices
** testing if installed package can be loaded from temporary location
** testing if installed package can be loaded from final location
** testing if installed package keeps a record of temporary installation path
* DONE (RSQLServer)
> library("RSQLServer")

Notes/Information:

The full CRAN archive is available at https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/. Browse to the package directory to find available versions and their corresponding .tar.gz download URLs.

Last modified on October 12, 2026

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