When you try to install or update a package through RStudio, it finds a decent mirror in its internal network and grabs the files from that. When you try to install or update a package through another IDE, or the REPL, or any other mechanism, the defaults don't let you do that.
sharder
is a service I've been developing for the CRAN administrators that geolocates the IPs of incoming
requests and directs them to a randomly-selected mirror in their country, with the ability to filter down to
https-supporting mirrors where available. The plan is to deploy it and have it act as an intermediary, so that
code>install.packages logic will go:
- If they've specified a mirror, use that:
- If they haven't, query
sharder
; - If
sharder
can't find anything, then ask.
This should dramatically cut down the amount of time R programmers spend looking at 117-option menus in their terminal.