Seqinfo is a dependency of DESeq2, a package I have been using since several years. I recently updated to R 4.5.2 and wanted to reinstall DESeq2. Apparently it is failing due to Seqinfo, which in turn is failing because an old version of S4Vectors is being installed.

> BiocManager::install("Seqinfo")
Bioconductor version 3.22 (BiocManager 1.30.27), R 4.5.2 (2025-10-31 ucrt)
Installing package(s) 'Seqinfo'
also installing the dependency 'S4Vectors'

  There are binary versions available but the source versions are later:
          binary source needs_compilation
S4Vectors 0.47.0 0.48.0              TRUE
Seqinfo   0.99.2  1.0.0             FALSE

  Binaries will be installed
trying URL 'https://bioconductor.org/packages/3.22/bioc/bin/windows/contrib/4.5/S4Vectors_0.47.0.zip'
Content type 'application/zip' length 2394893 bytes (2.3 MB)
downloaded 2.3 MB

package 'S4Vectors' successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked

The downloaded binary packages are in
        C:\Users\fabio\AppData\Local\Temp\RtmpoN0S94\downloaded_packages
installing the source package 'Seqinfo'

trying URL 'https://bioconductor.org/packages/3.22/bioc/src/contrib/Seqinfo_1.0.0.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 254658 bytes (248 KB)
downloaded 248 KB

* installing *source* package 'Seqinfo' ...
** this is package 'Seqinfo' version '1.0.0'
** package 'Seqinfo' successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
** using staged installation
** R
** inst
** byte-compile and prepare package for lazy loading
Error in loadNamespace(i, c(lib.loc, .libPaths()), versionCheck = vI[[i]]) : 
  namespace 'S4Vectors' 0.47.0 is being loaded, but >= 0.47.6 is required
Calls: <Anonymous> ... withCallingHandlers -> loadNamespace -> namespaceImport -> loadNamespace
Execution halted
ERROR: lazy loading failed for package 'Seqinfo'
* removing 'C:/Users/fabio/AppData/Local/R/win-library/4.5/Seqinfo'

You can see from the code below that a source code for a new version of s4Vectors is available, but I when I tried to install it from source, it failed due to the absence of "make".

> BiocManager::install("S4Vectors",type="source")
Bioconductor version 3.22 (BiocManager 1.30.27), R 4.5.2 (2025-10-31 ucrt)
Installing package(s) 'S4Vectors'
trying URL 'https://bioconductor.org/packages/3.22/bioc/src/contrib/S4Vectors_0.48.0.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 843897 bytes (824 KB)
downloaded 824 KB

* installing *source* package 'S4Vectors' ...
** this is package 'S4Vectors' version '0.48.0'
** package 'S4Vectors' successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
** using staged installation
** libs
Error in system(paste(MAKE, p1(paste("-f", shQuote(makefiles))), "compilers"),  : 
  'make' not found
* removing 'C:/Users/fabio/AppData/Local/R/win-library/4.5/S4Vectors'
* restoring previous 'C:/Users/fabio/AppData/Local/R/win-library/4.5/S4Vectors'

Can someone please help me?

Result of sessionInfo() below

sessionInfo( )

R version 4.5.2 (2025-10-31 ucrt)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64
Running under: Windows 11 x64 (build 26200)

Matrix products: default
  LAPACK version 3.12.1

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_United Kingdom.utf8  LC_CTYPE=English_United Kingdom.utf8    LC_MONETARY=English_United Kingdom.utf8
[4] LC_NUMERIC=C                            LC_TIME=English_United Kingdom.utf8    

time zone: Europe/London
tzcode source: internal

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] BiocManager_1.30.27

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] compiler_4.5.2 tools_4.5.2

I am answering my own question.

I found the solution thanks to this post, and I am writing here the very simple procedure:

1) Install Rtools

2) Install S4Vectors from source with install("S4Vectors", type="source")