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I have frequently encountered the behaviour that when bioclite() tries to updata all current packages, some may be defunct. To find this out however, it first downloads the package and then fails while trying to install it. Is there some way it could decide in advance that it is not necessary to download big out-of-date annotation packages?
Can you provide an example of what you mean by a 'defunct' pacakge?
I think IlluminaHumanMethylation450k.db is defunct. I cannot install it and I found posts in which people claim that it is defunct (i.e. https://support.bioconductor.org/p/71351/#78198)