Awesome R package development

A curated list of awesome tools to assist R 📦 development.

Note before:

• Not all tools are available on CRAN; some might be available only via GitHub or GitLab.
• Only tools helpful for package development are included, and not other resources (like books, talks, presentations, etc.).
• Tools which are part of publicly archived/retired GitHub repositories are not included.

Contributing

If you wish to suggest any additional tools, please make a PR request or raise an issue here.

Please note that the awesome-r-pkgtools project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By contributing to this project, you agree to abide by its terms.

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⚠️⚠️ Note Before ⚠️⚠️

If you are not using the latest release of pandoc, please change only the README.Rmd document.

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Swiss army knives 🛠

Tools useful across all stages of package development (some of these are meta-packages and their component packages are also included in respective sections for the sake of completeness).

• {devtools}

• {usethis}

• {packager}

• {pacs}

Package skeletons 💀

• {pkgkitten} (useful for creating new packages for R)

• {rcompendium} (to make the creation of R package/research compendium easier)

• {skeletor} (An R Package Skeleton Generator)

Shiny

• {golem} (framework for building shiny applications)

• {leprechaun} (leaner framework for building shiny applications)

• {rhino} (a framework to build high quality, enterprise-grade Shiny apps at speed)

• {fusen} ({rmarkdown}-based)

Meta-packages

• {pkgverse} (for package meta-verse)

• {metamakr} (for package meta-verse)

Naming things 🧸

• {available} (to check if a package name is available to use)

• {collidr} (to check for namespace collisions)

• {changer} (to change the name of an existing R package)

Working with package components

• {rprojroot} (accessing files w.r.t. package root directory)

• {desc} (manipulating DESCRIPTION files)

• {withr} (to manage package side effects by safely and temporarily modifying global states)

• {pkgload} (to simulate the process of installing and loading a package)

• {pkgbuild} (to find tools needed to build packages)

Package configuration

• {config} (to manage environment specific configuration values)

Package management tools

• {pkgcache} (to cache ‘CRAN’-like metadata and packages)

Documentation 📚

Manual

• {roxygen2} (to generate R package documentation from inline R comments)

• {Rd2roxygen} (in case you inherit a project where documentation was not written using {roxygen2})

• {sinew} (generate {roxygen2} skeletons)

• {roclang} (helpers for diffusing content across function documentation)

• {Rdpack} (for inserting references, figures, and evaluated examples in Rd docs)

• {roxygen2md} (using Markdown syntax in package documentation)

• {rd2list} (converts Rd docs to a human-readable list)

• roxygen2Comment (Rstudio addin for adding and remove {roxygen2} comment)

Math in package manual

• {katex} (to convert latex math expressions to HTML for use in package manual pages)

• {mathjaxr} (provides ‘MathJax’ and macros to enable its use within Rd files for rendering equations in the HTML help files)

Vignettes

• {knitr} (a general-purpose tool for dynamic report generation to be used as a vignette builder for R package vignettes)

• {rmarkdown} (to convert R Markdown documents to a variety of formats)

• {prettydoc} (creates lightweight yet pretty vignettes)

• {learnr} (to turn any R Markdown document into an interactive tutorial)

Website

• {pkgdown} (static website for package documentation)

• {gitdown} (software changes as a gitbook)

• {altdoc} (use docute or docsify to create a static website for package documentation)

Translation

• {potools} (for translating messages and checking the “health” of the messaging corpus)

Lifecycle

• {lifecycle} (to manage the life cycle of exported functions)

Badges and stickers

• {badger} (query information and generate badges for using in README and GitHub Pages)

• {hexSticker} (helper functions for creating reproducible hexagon sticker purely in R)

• hexwall (to create a wall of hexstickers)

Presentation

• {xaringan} (an R Markdown output format for remark.js slides)

Book

• {bookdown} (authoring framework for books and technical documents with R Markdown)

Change log and versioning

• {fledge} (streamlines the process of updating change logs and versioning R packages developed in git repositories)

• {newsmd} (utilities to add updates to the NEWS.md file)

Documentation quality ✒️

• {docreview} (to check quality of docs)

• {spelling} (to check for spelling mistakes)

• {gramr} (for grammar suggestions)

Unit testing 🧪

General

• {testthat} (a testing framework for R that is easy to learn and use; also provides snapshot testing)

• {tinytest} (zero-dependency unit testing framework that installs tests with the package)

• {RUnit} (a standard Unit Testing framework, with additional code inspection and report generation tools)

• {testit} (a simple package for testing R packages)

• {roxytest} (inline {testthat} tests with {roxygen2})

• {exampletestr} (tests based on package examples)

• {unitizer} (simplifies regression tests by comparing objects produced by test code with earlier versions of those same objects)

• {r-hedgehog} (property based testing)

• {autotest} (automatic mutation testing of R packages)

Shiny applications

• {shinytest} (testing Shiny apps)

• {shinytest2} (testing Shiny apps using a headless Chromium web browser)

Web applications

• {httptest} (a test environment for HTTP requests in R)

• {httptest2} (the same for {httr2} package)

Visual regression testing

• {vdiffr} (visual regression testing)

Mock testing

• {mockthat} (function mocking for unit testing to third-party packages)

• {mockr} (allows mocking functions in the package under test)

• {testdown} (turn {testthat} results into a {bookdown} project)

Helpers for testing frameworks

• {testthis} (RStudio addins for working with files that contain tests)

• {xpectr} (builds unit tests with the {testthat} package by providing tools for generating expectations)

Code analysis 🗂⏱

General

• {codetools} (code analysis tools for R)

• {goodpractice} (Swiss army knife for good practices)

• {inteRgrate} (provides an opinionated set of rules for R package development)

• {pkgcheck} (checks if package follows good practices recommended for packages in the rOpenSci ecosystem)

• {rchk} (provides several bug-finding tools that look for memory protection errors in C source code using R API)

• {sourcetools} (tools for reading, tokenizing, and parsing R code)

Code coverage

• {covr} (computes code coverage)

• {covrpage} (provides summary README of code coverage and corresponding tests)

Lint detection

• {lintr} (static code analysis)

• {roger} (provides tools for grading the coding style and documentation of R scripts)

• {cleanr} (tests code for some of the most common code layout flaws)

Code complexity

• {cyclocomp} (to index the complexity of a function)

Code similarity

• {dupree} (identifies code blocks that have a high level of similarity within a set of R files)

• {rscc} (provides source code similarity evaluation by variable/function names)

• {SimilaR} (quantifies the similarity of the code-base of R functions by means of program dependence graphs)

Lines of code

• {cloc} (counts blank lines, comment lines, and physical lines of source code in source files)

Code performance ⏱️

Benchmarking

• {bench} (provides high precision benchmarks for R expressions)

• {microbenchmark} (provides infrastructure to accurately measure and compare the execution time of R expressions)

• {touchstone} (benchmarking pull requests)

Profiling

• {profvis} (to profile and visualize profiling data)

• {proffer} (to create friendlier, faster visualizations for profiling data)

• {jointprof} (to profile packages with native code in C, C++, Fortran, etc.)

Formatting 🧽

• {styler} (to format code according to a style guide)

• {stylermd} (to format text in Markdown documents)

• {formatR} (to format R source code)

• AlignAssign (RStudio addin that aligns the assignment operators within a highlighted area)

• {snakecase} (helpful for having consistent case while naming objects in the package)

Dependencies ⚖️

• {pkgdepends} (to find recursive dependencies of from various sources)

• {deepdep} (to visualize and explore package dependencies)

• {itdepends} (to assess usage, measure weights, visualize proportions, and assist removal of dependencies)

• {DependenciesGraphs} (to visualize package dependencies)

• {pkgnet} (to build a graph representation of a package and its dependencies)

• {functiondepends} (to find functions in an unstructured directory and explore their dependencies)

• {pkgndep} (checks the heaviness of the packages used)

• {oysteR} (to secure package against insecure dependencies)

• {attachment} (to deal with package dependencies during package development)

CRAN checks, submission, and status 📬

• {rcmdcheck} (to run R CMD check form R programmatically)

• {rhub} (to run R CMD check on CRAN architectures)

• {checkhelper} (to help avoid problems with CRAN submissions)

• {foghorn} (to check for results and submission portal status)

• {urlchecker} (to checks for URL rot)

Usage 🙈

• {cranlogs} (for computing CRAN download counts)

• {packageRank} (for visualizing CRAN download counts)

• {dlstats} (provides download statistics for packages)

CI/CD 📟

CI/CD: continuous integration and either continuous delivery or continuous deployment

• actions (for GitHub Actions)

• r-appveyor (for AppVeyor)

• {tic} (for Circle CI and GitHub Actions)

• {jenkins} (for Jenkins CI)

• {cronR} (to schedule R scripts/processes with the cron scheduler)

Security/Privacy 👮

• {digest} (for the creation of hash digests of arbitrary R objects)

• {hash} (implements a data structure similar to hashes in Perl and dictionaries in Python but with a purposefully R flavor)

• {gpg} (GNU privacy guard for R)

Build systems

• {fakemake} (to mock Unix Make build system in case it is unavailable)

Validation frameworks

• {valtools} (in clinical research and drug development)

Debugging 🔭

• {debugme} (provides helpers to specify debug messages as special string constants, and control debugging of packages via environment variables)

• {debugr} (tools to print out the value of R objects/expressions while running an R script)

• {winch} (provides stack traces for call chains that cross between R and C/C++ function calls)

• {flow} (to visualize as flow diagrams the logic of functions, expressions, or scripts, which can ease debugging)

Input validation 🔬

• {checkmate} (fast and versatile argument checks)

• {assertthat} (to declare the pre and post conditions that you code should satisfy and to produce friendly error messages)

• {assertive} (provides readable check functions to ensure code integrity)

• {pkgcond} (better error messages for package users)

• {dreamerr} (a simple and intuitive, yet powerful and flexible, way to check the arguments passed to a function and to offer informative error messages)

Package metadata 🖨

• {codemetar} (provides utilities to generate, parse, and modify codemeta.jsonld files automatically for R packages)

• {codemeta} (a leaner version of {codemetar})

• {cffr} (provides utilities to generate, parse, modify and validate CITATION.cff files automatically for R packages)

• {pkgapi} (to create the map of function calls in a package)

• {packagemetrics} (for comparing among packages)

• {devtoolbox} (to create a summary report for R package and to extract dependency statistics in a tidy data frame)

• {pkgattrs} (useful for getting information on the contents of any R package)

• {foreman} (for unpacking, interrogating and subsetting R packages)

• {sessioninfo} (to include R session information)

Reverse dependency checks 📡⚰️

• {revdepcheck} (for automated, isolated, reverse dependency checking)

• {xfun} (specifically, xfun::rev_check())

Gratitude 🙏💌

To thank the contributors or maintainers of packages you rely on.

• {thankr} (to find out who maintains the packages you are using)

• {allcontributors} (to help acknowledge all contributions)

Docker container 🛍

• {containerit} (to package R script/session/workspace and all dependencies as a Docker container by generating a suitable Dockerfile)

• {usethat} (to automate analytic project setup tasks)

Integration with other languages 🔗

C++

• {Rcpp}

• {cpp11}

• {memtools} (to solve memory leaks)

Python

• {reticulate}

Rust

• {cargo}

• {hellorust}

.NET Framework

• {rClr}

JavaScript/HTML/CSS

• {htmltools}
• {packer}

Julia

• {JuliaCall}

Upkeep 🧹

• {TODOr} (RStudio addin to list things that you need to do or change)

Sundry 🗒

• {prefixer} (prefix function with their namespace )

• {rstudioapi}(to conditionally access the RStudio API from CRAN packages)

• {gitignore} (to fetch gitignore templates)

• {precommit} (pre-commit hooks)

• {DIZutils} (helpers for packages dealing with database connections)

Code of Conduct

Please note that the awesome-r-pkgtools project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By contributing to this project, you agree to abide by its terms.