How to Install R Packages with Ansible

Here is a short snippet of Ansible playbook that installs R and any required packages to any nodes of the cluster:

- name: Making sure R is installed
apt: pkg=r-base state=installed

- name: adding a few R packages
command: /usr/bin/Rscript --slave --no-save --no-restore-history -e "if (! ('{{item}}' %in% installed.packages()[,'Package'])) install.packages(pkgs={{item}}, repos=c('http://www.freestatistics.org/cran/'))"
with_items:
- rjson
- rPython
- plyr
- psych
- reshape2

You should replace the repos with one chosen from the list of Cran mirrors.

Note that the command above installs each package only if it is not already present, but messes up the “changed” status of Ansible’s PLAY RECAP by incorrectly reporting a change per R package at every run.