Windows binary distributions supported?

[kenahoo]

In a standard CRAN repository, Windows binaries are stored in a location like /bin/windows/contrib/$R_VERSION/. Is that a supported use case for this plugin?

[cderv]

When using the proxy repo, I manage to download windows binary package. If you try to install a package on a windows computer using your nexus repo with install.packages, it will download from CRAN the binary and put it correctly in the repo.
However, I did not try to push a windows binary to a hosted repo. Have you tried yourself to upload to bin/windows/contrib and see if it's working ?

[kenahoo]

Hi @cderv, I did do some trial and error, and I discovered that if I push a binary (using curl) to /bin/windows/contrib/3.3/PackageName_1.2.3.zip, it gets indexed correctly and I can use it for a binary install. It didn't work to push it to /bin/windows/contrib/3.3/PackageName/PackageName_1.2.3.zip - it accepted the upload, but it didn't get indexed to end up in the PACKAGES.gz file, so it couldn't be installed from R.

[cderv]

On CRAN, all the binary are stored in bin/windows/contrib/<version>/<pkg.zip>, and not in sub-folders.
As mentioned in another discussion, I think it is possible to support subdirectories but it needs to be taken into account in the generation of PACKAGES.gz or PACKAGES file. It is not standard and correspond to tools::write_PACKAGES(".", subdirs = TRUE). CRAN is not a repository that support subdirectories for examples.
So I don't know what should be the behaviour of nexus, and if currently this is a bug or not.

[kenahoo]

I'm happy with the resolution here, ticket can be closed as far as I'm concerned.