Devtools package not found in R-3.0.1

Question

I have R of version 3.0.1 and I have to install Shiny Incubator for that prerequisite is devtools. But i am not able to install both of them as they are not available in given R versions.

Answer 1

"Not available", through install.packages, doesn't actually mean that they're not available - merely that the latest released version isn't compatible with your R version. So, one option is to upgrade, as MrFlick notes - but if you don't have control over your machine (it's remote, say), or you can't upgrade, an alternative is to look in the archive of package versions, and download them from most recent to oldest until you find the one that is compatible.

As an example, let's take devtools. As you can see from the "Depends" field, it needs >= R 3.0.2 - damn! But the archive, containing the old releases, probably has one that's compatible with 3.0.1. Unfortunately the archive doesn't contain compatibility notes, but it does contain dates of release - and we can be fairly sure that versions released prior to R 3.0.2's release won't be designed to work with 3.0.2.

3.0.2 was released in September 2013, and devtools 1.3.0 was released in July. Download it and see if it works. Obviously this may cause problems such as missing functionality that was released in later versions of devtools, but if you can't upgrade, it's better than not having it.