check_installed() returns FALSE for the entire vector when a single package is missing

[ThierryO]

The sapply yield to correct output but is much slower.

tex_package <- c(
     "babel", "carlisle", "dvips", "colortbl", "emptypage", "environ", "eso",
     "eurosym", "fancyhdr", "footmisc", "grfext", "helvetic", "hyphen-dutch",
     "hyphen-french", "inconsolata", "lastpage", "makecell", "marginnote",
     "mdframed", "needspace", "oberdiek", "parskip", "pdflscape", "pdfpages",
     "placeins", "tabu", "tex", "times", "threeparttable", "threeparttablex",
     "titlesec", "tocloft", "trimspaces", "ulem", "upquote", "varwidth",
     "wrapfig", "zref"
)
tinytex::check_installed(tex_package)
 [1] FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
sapply(tex_package, tinytex::check_installed)
          babel        carlisle           dvips        colortbl       emptypage         environ             eso 
           TRUE            TRUE            TRUE            TRUE            TRUE            TRUE           FALSE 
        eurosym        fancyhdr        footmisc          grfext        helvetic    hyphen-dutch   hyphen-french 
           TRUE            TRUE            TRUE            TRUE            TRUE            TRUE            TRUE 
    inconsolata        lastpage        makecell      marginnote        mdframed       needspace        oberdiek 
           TRUE            TRUE            TRUE            TRUE            TRUE            TRUE            TRUE 
        parskip       pdflscape        pdfpages        placeins            tabu             tex           times 
           TRUE            TRUE            TRUE            TRUE            TRUE            TRUE            TRUE 
 threeparttable threeparttablex        titlesec         tocloft      trimspaces            ulem         upquote 
           TRUE            TRUE            TRUE            TRUE            TRUE            TRUE            TRUE 
       varwidth         wrapfig            zref 
           TRUE            TRUE            TRUE 

R version 4.2.2 Patched (2022-11-10 r83330)
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
Running under: Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS, RStudio 2022.12.0.354

Locale:
  LC_CTYPE=nl_BE.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C               LC_TIME=nl_BE.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=nl_BE.UTF-8    
  LC_MONETARY=nl_BE.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=nl_BE.UTF-8    LC_PAPER=nl_BE.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C                 
  LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C             LC_MEASUREMENT=nl_BE.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C       

Package version:
  graphics_4.2.2  grDevices_4.2.2 stats_4.2.2     tinytex_0.44.1  tools_4.2.2     utils_4.2.2     xfun_0.37      

LaTeX version used: 
  TeX Live 2022 (TinyTeX) with tlmgr 2022-04-18

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[cderv]

I am not quite sure what happens here. This works for me.

tex_package <- c(
    "babel", "carlisle", "dvips", "colortbl", "emptypage", "environ", "eso",
    "eurosym", "fancyhdr", "footmisc", "grfext", "helvetic", "hyphen-dutch",
    "hyphen-french", "inconsolata", "lastpage", "makecell", "marginnote",
    "mdframed", "needspace", "oberdiek", "parskip", "pdflscape", "pdfpages",
    "placeins", "tabu", "tex", "times", "threeparttable", "threeparttablex",
    "titlesec", "tocloft", "trimspaces", "ulem", "upquote", "varwidth",
    "wrapfig", "zref"
)
tinytex::check_installed(tex_package)
#>  [1]  TRUE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE  TRUE FALSE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE
#> [13] FALSE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE FALSE
#> [25] FALSE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE  TRUE
#> [37]  TRUE FALSE

The code is quite simple

tinytex/R/tlmgr.R

Lines 160 to 167 in 484d53c

	check_installed = function(pkgs) {
	if (length(pkgs) == 0) return(TRUE)
	res = tryCatch(
	tl_list(pkgs, stdout = TRUE, stderr = FALSE, .quiet = TRUE),
	error = function(e) NULL, warning = function(e) NULL
	)
	pkgs %in% res
	}

I believe this is because of the tryCatch here - probably something did not work in the call to tlmgr
We do

tlmgr info --list --only-installed --data 'name'

but if it failles, we silently returns res = NULL and so everything is FALSE.

Can you check the command in terminal on your side ? Does this happens again or could it have been temporary ?
Asking because as it is working with sapply(), the command seems to work at some point.

[yihui]

This is a bug. I just fixed it. Thanks for the report!

[cderv]

Oh I see. Thanks @yihui ! and thanks @ThierryO for the report !