R: How to update a package and keep it from reverting to the original?

Question

I want to upgrade the package ggplot2:

library(ggplot2)
packageDescription("ggplot2")["Version"]
> 0.8.3

But the current version is 0.8.7.

I tried update.packages(), which seemed to work OK. But it still returned older version 0.8.3.

So I downloaded and installed the package source from Cran, which says 0.8.7 in the download page. I then install it via the GUI menu in R. It returns

** building package indices ...
* DONE (ggplot2)

I then run:

packageDescription("ggplot2")["Version"]
> 0.8.3

And still I have the older version!

I don't know why this is not working, what's more I had already come across this problem before and solved it (I can't remember exactly what) but now it has gone back to the older version! What's the easiest way to keep packages like this updated automatically and not have them refer back to older packages?

Answer 1

What version of R are you using? CRAN binaries are only kept up-to-date for the latest R release (i.e. 2.10.1). If you have an older version of R and have the development tools installed, you can use install.packages("ggplot2",type="source").