I'd like to unload a package without having to restart R (mostly because restarting R as I try out different, conflicting packages is getting frustrating, but conceivably this could be used in a program to use one function and then another--although namespace referencing is probably a better idea for that use).
?library doesn't show any options that would unload a package.
There is a suggestion that detach can unload package, but the following both fail:
detach(vegan)
Error in
detach(vegan): invalidnameargument
detach("vegan")
Error in
detach("vegan"): invalidnameargument
So how do I unload a package?
The answer is
Try this (see ?detach for more details):
detach("package:vegan", unload=TRUE)
It is possible to have multiple versions of a package loaded at once (for example, if you have a development version and a stable version in different libraries). To guarantee that all copies are detached, use this function.
detach_package <- function(pkg, character.only = FALSE)
{
if(!character.only)
{
pkg <- deparse(substitute(pkg))
}
search_item <- paste("package", pkg, sep = ":")
while(search_item %in% search())
{
detach(search_item, unload = TRUE, character.only = TRUE)
}
}
Usage is, for example
detach_package(vegan)
or
detach_package("vegan", TRUE)
When you are going back and forth between scripts it may only sometimes be necessary to unload a package. Here's a simple IF statement that will prevent warnings that would appear if you tried to unload a package that was not currently loaded.
if("package:vegan" %in% search()) detach("package:vegan", unload=TRUE)
Including this at the top of a script might be helpful.
I hope that makes your day!
Just go to OUTPUT window, then click on Packages icon (it is located between Plot and Help icons). Remove "tick / check mark" from the package you wanted be unload.
For again using the package just put a "tick or Check mark" in front of package or use :
library (lme4)
You can uncheck the checkbox button in RStudio (packages).
I would like to add an alternative solution. This solution does not directly answer your question on unloading a package but, IMHO, provides a cleaner alternative to achieve your desired goal, which I understand, is broadly concerned with avoiding name conflicts and trying different functions, as stated:
mostly because restarting R as I try out different, conflicting packages is getting frustrating, but conceivably this could be used in a program to use one function and then another--although namespace referencing is probably a better idea for that use
Solution
Function with_package offered via the withr package offers the possibility to:
attache a package to the search path, executes the code, then removes the package from the search path. The package namespace is not unloaded, however.
Example
library(withr)
with_package("ggplot2", {
ggplot(mtcars) + geom_point(aes(wt, hp))
})
# Calling geom_point outside withr context
exists("geom_point")
# [1] FALSE
geom_point used in the example is not accessible from the global namespace. I reckon it may be a cleaner way of handling conflicts than loading and unloading packages.
You can try all you want to remove a package (and all the dependencies it brought in alongside) using unloadNamespace() but the memory footprint will still persist. And no, detach("package:,packageName", unload=TRUE, force = TRUE) will not work either.
From a fresh new console or Session > Restart R check memory with the pryr package:
pryr::mem_used()
# 40.6 MB ## This will depend on which packages are loaded obviously (can also fluctuate a bit after the decimal)
Check my sessionInfo()
R version 3.6.1 (2019-07-05)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 17763)
Matrix products: default
locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_Canada.1252 LC_CTYPE=English_Canada.1252 LC_MONETARY=English_Canada.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C
[5] LC_TIME=English_Canada.1252
attached base packages:
[1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base
loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] compiler_3.6.1 pryr_0.1.4 magrittr_1.5 tools_3.6.1 Rcpp_1.0.3 stringi_1.4.3 codetools_0.2-16 stringr_1.4.0
[9] packrat_0.5.0
Let's load the Seurat package and check the new memory footprint:
library(Seurat)
pryr::mem_used()
# 172 MB ## Likely to change in the future but just to give you an idea
Let's use unloadNamespace() to remove everything:
unloadNamespace("Seurat")
unloadNamespace("ape")
unloadNamespace("cluster")
unloadNamespace("cowplot")
unloadNamespace("ROCR")
unloadNamespace("gplots")
unloadNamespace("caTools")
unloadNamespace("bitops")
unloadNamespace("fitdistrplus")
unloadNamespace("RColorBrewer")
unloadNamespace("sctransform")
unloadNamespace("future.apply")
unloadNamespace("future")
unloadNamespace("plotly")
unloadNamespace("ggrepel")
unloadNamespace("ggridges")
unloadNamespace("ggplot2")
unloadNamespace("gridExtra")
unloadNamespace("gtable")
unloadNamespace("uwot")
unloadNamespace("irlba")
unloadNamespace("leiden")
unloadNamespace("reticulate")
unloadNamespace("rsvd")
unloadNamespace("survival")
unloadNamespace("Matrix")
unloadNamespace("nlme")
unloadNamespace("lmtest")
unloadNamespace("zoo")
unloadNamespace("metap")
unloadNamespace("lattice")
unloadNamespace("grid")
unloadNamespace("httr")
unloadNamespace("ica")
unloadNamespace("igraph")
unloadNamespace("irlba")
unloadNamespace("KernSmooth")
unloadNamespace("leiden")
unloadNamespace("MASS")
unloadNamespace("pbapply")
unloadNamespace("plotly")
unloadNamespace("png")
unloadNamespace("RANN")
unloadNamespace("RcppAnnoy")
unloadNamespace("tidyr")
unloadNamespace("dplyr")
unloadNamespace("tibble")
unloadNamespace("RANN")
unloadNamespace("tidyselect")
unloadNamespace("purrr")
unloadNamespace("htmlwidgets")
unloadNamespace("htmltools")
unloadNamespace("lifecycle")
unloadNamespace("pillar")
unloadNamespace("vctrs")
unloadNamespace("rlang")
unloadNamespace("Rtsne")
unloadNamespace("SDMTools")
unloadNamespace("Rdpack")
unloadNamespace("bibtex")
unloadNamespace("tsne")
unloadNamespace("backports")
unloadNamespace("R6")
unloadNamespace("lazyeval")
unloadNamespace("scales")
unloadNamespace("munsell")
unloadNamespace("colorspace")
unloadNamespace("npsurv")
unloadNamespace("compiler")
unloadNamespace("digest")
unloadNamespace("R.utils")
unloadNamespace("pkgconfig")
unloadNamespace("gbRd")
unloadNamespace("parallel")
unloadNamespace("gdata")
unloadNamespace("listenv")
unloadNamespace("crayon")
unloadNamespace("splines")
unloadNamespace("zeallot")
unloadNamespace("reshape")
unloadNamespace("glue")
unloadNamespace("lsei")
unloadNamespace("RcppParallel")
unloadNamespace("data.table")
unloadNamespace("viridisLite")
unloadNamespace("globals")
Now check sessionInfo():
R version 3.6.1 (2019-07-05)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 17763)
Matrix products: default
locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_Canada.1252 LC_CTYPE=English_Canada.1252 LC_MONETARY=English_Canada.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C
[5] LC_TIME=English_Canada.1252
attached base packages:
[1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base
loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] tools_3.6.1 stringr_1.4.0 rstudioapi_0.10 pryr_0.1.4 jsonlite_1.6 gtools_3.8.1 R.oo_1.22.0
[8] magrittr_1.5 Rcpp_1.0.3 R.methodsS3_1.7.1 stringi_1.4.3 plyr_1.8.4 reshape2_1.4.3 codetools_0.2-16
[15] packrat_0.5.0 assertthat_0.2.1
Check the memory footprint:
pryr::mem_used()
# 173 MB
Another option is
devtools::unload("your-package")
This apparently also deals with the issue of registered S3 methods that are not removed with unloadNamespace()
You can also use the unloadNamespace command, as in:
unloadNamespace("sqldf")
The function detaches the namespace prior to unloading it.
I tried what kohske wrote as an answer and I got error again, so I did some search and found this which worked for me (R 3.0.2):
require(splines) # package
detach(package:splines)
or also
library(splines)
pkg <- "package:splines"
detach(pkg, character.only = TRUE)
detach(package:PackageName) works and there is no need to use quotes.
Note also that you can only use unload() once. If you use it a second time without rerunning library(), y'll get the not very informative error message invalid 'name' argument:
library(vegan)
#> Loading required package: permute
#> Loading required package: lattice
#> This is vegan 2.5-6
detach("package:vegan", unload=TRUE)
detach("package:vegan", unload=TRUE)
#> Error in detach("package:vegan", unload = TRUE): invalid 'name' argument
Created on 2020-05-09 by the reprex package (v0.3.0)
Source: Stackoverflow.com