The package you’re installing from Github doesn’t directly require XML.
Try to run package installation with verbose output by overriding the default install command with
install:
- Rscript --verbose -e 'deps <- remotes::dev_package_deps(dependencies = NA);remotes::install_deps(dependencies = TRUE);if (!all(deps$package %in% installed.packages())) { message("missing: ", paste(setdiff(deps$package, installed.packages()), collapse=", ")); q(status = 1, save = "no")}'
and see if it shows which dependency requires that high version of XML. You may need to require an earlier version of that dependency, or an earlier version of some higher-level dependency.