Installing the development version of ggplot2

Installing the development version alongside your regular installation of ggplot2

To install the development version of ggplot2 from GitHub without interfering with your regular installation of ggplot2:

install.packages("devtools")
library(devtools)
dev_mode(TRUE)
install_github("scales")
install_github("gtable")
install_github("ggplot2")

In each R session where you want to use this version, run:

library(devtools)
dev_mode(TRUE)
library(ggplot2)

To use your regular ggplot2 installation, just restart R.

Note that if you use R CMD check from the command line, it won't be aware of your dev_mode installation of these packages (which will be in ~/R-dev). If you'd like to run R CMD check on a package that imports these packages, do the following:

library(devtools)
dev_mode(TRUE)

# Runs R CMD check and preserves libpaths. Replace packagedir with the path to your package.
check('packagedir')

Replacing your regular installation of ggplot2 with the development version

If you want to replace your regular installation of ggplot2 with the development version, don't run dev_mode():

install.packages("devtools")
library(devtools)
install_github("scales")
install_github("gtable")
install_github("ggplot2")

Then use ggplot2 as you normally would.