r/vignettes/install_nightly.Rmd

---
title: "Installing development versions"
description: >
  Learn how to install nightly builds of arrow 
output: rmarkdown::html_vignette
---

Users of the arrow package will typically want to use the latest release version of the package, but may occasionally require a development build. Arrow developers are more likely to need the current development version. In this article we describe the process for installing the development version.

## Install nightly builds

Development versions of the package (binary and source) are built
nightly and hosted at <https://nightlies.apache.org/arrow/r/>. 
These nightly package builds are not official Apache releases and are
not recommended for production use. They may be useful for testing bug
fixes and new features under active development.

To install arrow from there, use the following command:

``` r
install.packages("arrow", repos = c(arrow = "https://nightlies.apache.org/arrow/r", getOption("repos")))
```

Conda users can install arrow nightly builds with:

``` shell
conda install -c arrow-nightlies -c conda-forge --strict-channel-priority r-arrow
```

If you already have a version of arrow installed, you can switch to
the latest nightly development version as follows:

``` r
arrow::install_arrow(nightly = TRUE)
```

## Install from git repository

An alternative way to obtain a development versions is to install the R package from a git checkout. To do so, type the following at the terminal:

```shell
git clone https://github.com/apache/arrow
cd arrow/r
R CMD INSTALL .
```

If you don't already have libarrow on your system,
when installing the R package from source, it will also download and build
libarrow for you. See the links below for build environment
variables for options for configuring the build source and enabled features.

## Further reading

- For users looking for information about installing on Linux, see the [Linux installation article](./install.html).
- For developers looking to understand the installation scripts, see the [installation details article](./developers/install_details.html).