How to install a package from a download zip file

I have download this package as a zip file.

Is it possible to install it from R console using this zip or unzip version to a specific path?

install.packages("C:/Users/Desktop/rvest-master.zip', lib='C:/R/R-3.2.1',repos = NULL)

I type the previous command but is not working

> setwd("C:/Users/Desktop/")
> unzip("rvest-master.zip")
> file.rename("rvest-master", "rvest")
[1] TRUE
> shell("R CMD build rvest")
Warning messages:
1: running command ' /c R CMD build rvest' had status 127 
2: In shell("R CMD build rvest") :
  'R CMD build rvest' execution failed with error code 127
> install.packages("rvest_0.2.0.9000.tar.gz", repos = NULL)
Installing package into ‘C:/Users/Documents/R/win-library/3.2’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
Warning: invalid package 'rvest_0.2.0.9000.tar.gz'
Error: ERROR: no packages specified
Warning messages:
1: running command '"C:/R/R-3.2.1/bin/x64/R" CMD INSTALL -l "C:\Users\Documents\R\win-library\3.2" "rvest_0.2.0.9000.tar.gz"' had status 1 
2: In install.packages("rvest_0.2.0.9000.tar.gz", repos = NULL) :
  installation of package ‘rvest_0.2.0.9000.tar.gz’ had non-zero exit status

In the previous line are the results from the answer

You have downloaded a zip of the source of a package. This is not the standard packaging of a package source nor is it a standard Windows binary (i.e., a built package distributed as a .zip, as from CRAN).

The easiest thing for you to do is to install this package directly from Github using devtools:

library("devtools")
install_github("hadley/rvest")

If you decide to install it locally, you need to unzip the package directory, build it from the command line using R CMD build rvest and then install either using R CMD INSTALL or from within R using the command you already have (but performed on the built "tarball"). Here's how you could do all of this from within R:

setwd("C:/Users/Desktop/")
unzip("rvest-master.zip")
file.rename("rvest-master", "rvest")
shell("R CMD build rvest")

This will make a tarball version of the package in the current directory. You can then install that with

install.packages("rvest_0.2.0.9000.tar.gz", repos = NULL)

Since the version number is merged into the tarball name, it may not always be obvious what the new file might be called. You can use list.files() to grab the new tarball.

install.packages(list.files(pattern="rvest*.tar.gz"), repos = NULL)

If the shell() line gives you an error like this

'R' is not recognized as an internal or external command

You need to make sure that R is in your shell path. You can add it with something like

Sys.setenv(PATH=paste(R.home("bin"), Sys.getenv("PATH"), sep=";"))

Try install.packages('C:/Users/Desktop/rvest-master.zip', repos = NULL, type = "win.binary"). (Untested)

Hard to believe this don't have a clear, simple and accurate answer.

1. The zip you downloaded from github by clicking "download as zip" is a pack of that repo, which is not the standard R source package format like CRAN hosted. Thus the methods that work with CRAN source tar.gz will not work with this kind of zip.
2. The simplest method is to use devtools::install_local. If devtools bring too many dependencies to you, you can use remotes::install_local which is the real function and have much less dependencies.

If this is the zip of the source of a package, and the R core install.packages() doesn't work, then you can use install_local() from the devtools package.

I often do this when installing packages from GitHub as getting curl through our proxy is painful. So I download the source zip and install like this.