diff --git a/R/create-docs.sh b/R/create-docs.sh
index 310dbc5fb5..ce0fb48b9f 100755
--- a/R/create-docs.sh
+++ b/R/create-docs.sh
@@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ pushd "$FWDIR" > /dev/null
 mkdir -p pkg/html
 pushd pkg/html
 
-"$R_SCRIPT_PATH/Rscript" -e 'libDir <- "../../lib"; library(SparkR, lib.loc=libDir); library(knitr); knit_rd("SparkR", links = tools::findHTMLlinks(paste(libDir, "SparkR", sep="/")))'
+"$R_SCRIPT_PATH/Rscript" -e 'libDir <- "../../lib"; library(SparkR, lib.loc=libDir); knitr::knit_rd("SparkR", links = tools::findHTMLlinks(file.path(libDir, "SparkR")))'
 
 popd
 
diff --git a/R/create-rd.sh b/R/create-rd.sh
index aaad3b1aaf..72a932c175 100755
--- a/R/create-rd.sh
+++ b/R/create-rd.sh
@@ -34,4 +34,4 @@ pushd "$FWDIR" > /dev/null
 . "$FWDIR/find-r.sh"
 
 # Generate Rd files if devtools is installed
-"$R_SCRIPT_PATH/Rscript" -e ' if("devtools" %in% rownames(installed.packages())) { library(devtools); setwd("'$FWDIR'"); devtools::document(pkg="./pkg", roclets=c("rd")) }'
+"$R_SCRIPT_PATH/Rscript" -e ' if(requireNamespace("devtools", quietly=TRUE)) { setwd("'$FWDIR'"); devtools::document(pkg="./pkg", roclets="rd") }'
diff --git a/dev/lint-r.R b/dev/lint-r.R
index 7e165319e3..8a302a541d 100644
--- a/dev/lint-r.R
+++ b/dev/lint-r.R
@@ -20,14 +20,13 @@ SPARK_ROOT_DIR <- as.character(argv[1])
 LOCAL_LIB_LOC <- file.path(SPARK_ROOT_DIR, "R", "lib")
 
 # Checks if SparkR is installed in a local directory.
-if (! library(SparkR, lib.loc = LOCAL_LIB_LOC, logical.return = TRUE)) {
+if (!requireNamespace("SparkR", lib.loc = LOCAL_LIB_LOC)) {
   stop("You should install SparkR in a local directory with `R/install-dev.sh`.")
 }
 
-# Installs lintr from Github in a local directory.
-# NOTE: The CRAN's version is too old to adapt to our rules.
-if ("lintr" %in% row.names(installed.packages()) == FALSE) {
-  devtools::install_github("jimhester/lintr@v2.0.0")
+# Installs lintr if needed
+if (!requireNamespace("lintr")) {
+  install.packages('lintr')
 }
 
 library(lintr)