Choosing where to install the package from, and which flavor.
The exact commands stay in the root README.md,
which CRAN renders and which keeps the full install text
and the Flavors table.
Four sources serve the package:
- CRAN publishes the released
duckdb, with binaries for recent R on Windows and macOS; elsewhere it is a source install, which compiles the whole vendored engine — tens of minutes rather than seconds. - Posit Public Package Manager serves binaries of the same CRAN release for many platforms, including Linux.
- r-universe serves
development versions and every flavor,
duckdbincluded. - GitHub installs this repository's current state from source,
pak::pak("duckdb/duckdb-r").
Use duckdb unless you need to pin a minor version or to test
unreleased builds.
Which flavors exist is
branches/flavors/'s,
and the root README.md's Flavors table
is where a new one is announced.
Picking a flavor changes the package name and little else,
and a flavor installs alongside duckdb instead of replacing it;
only duckdb reaches CRAN.
A source install has no shortcut of its own:
nothing fetches a prebuilt engine on the installer's behalf
(build/fast-paths/
says why not),
so the choice is a binary from one of the sources above,
or the compile — with ccache and parallelism to soften it
(build/configuration/).
Compiling a clone yourself is
build/source-build/.