psotob91 / awesome-r-pkgtools

A curated list of awesome resources for R package development

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.).

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}

• {rcompendium}

• {golem} (framework for building shiny applications)

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

• {fusen} ({rmarkdown}-based)

• {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 management tools

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

Documentation 📚

Manual

• {roxygen2}

• {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 manual

• {katex}

• {mathjaxr}

Vignettes

• {knitr}

• {rmarkdown}

• {prettydoc} (creates lightweight yet pretty vignettes)

• {learnr} (interactive tutorials)

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}

• {hexSticker}

• hexwall (to create a wall of hexstickers)

Presentation

• {xaringan}

Book

• {bookdown}

News

• {newsmd}

Documentation quality ✒️

• {docreview} (to check quality of docs)

• {spelling} (to spell check)

• {gramr} (for grammar suggestions)

Package change tracking and versioning

• {fledge}

Unit testing 🧪

• {testthat}

• {vdiffr} (visual regression testing)

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

• {mockr}

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

• {exampletestr} (tests based on package examples)

• {shinytest} (testing Shiny apps)

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

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

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

• {autotest}

• {tinytest}

• {RUnit}

• {testit}

• {testthis}

• {xpectr}

• {unitizer}

• {r-hedgehog} (property based testing)

Code analysis 🗂⏱

General

• {codetools}

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

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

Code coverage

• {covr} (computes code coverage)

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

Lint detection

• {lintr} (static code analysis)

• {roger}

• {cleanr}

Code complexity

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

Code similarity

• {dupree}

• {rscc}

• {SimilaR}

Benchmarking and profiling

• {bench}

• {profvis}

Lines of code

• {cloc}

Formatting 🧽

R code

• {styler} (especially relevant if you follow {tidyverse} style guide)

• {formatR}

• AlignAssign (RStudio addin)

Markdown documents

• {stylermd}

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}(build a graph representation of a package and its dependencies)

• {functiondepends}

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

• {oysteR} (secure package against insecure dependencies)

• {attachment}

CRAN checks, submission, and status 📬

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

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

• {checkhelper} (submission help)

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

• {urlchecker} (URL checks)

Usage 🙈

• {cranlogs} (computing CRAN download counts)

• {packageRank} (visualizing CRAN download counts)

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}

• {hash}

• {gpg}

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}

• {debugr}

Input validation 🔬

• {checkmate} (argument checks)

• {assertthat}

• {assertive}

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

• {dreamerr}

Package metadata 🖨

• {codemetar}

• {cffr}

• {pkgapi}

• {packagemetrics} (for comparing among packages)

• {devtoolbox}

• {pkgattrs}

• {foreman}

• {sessioninfo}

Reverse dependency checks 📡⚰️

• {revdepcheck}

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

Docker container 🛍

• {containerit}

• {usethat}

Gratitude 🙏💌

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

• {thankr}

• {allcontributors}

Integration with other languages 🔗

C++

• {Rcpp}

• {cpp11}

• {memtools} (to solve memory leaks)

Python

• {reticulate}

Rust

• {hellorust}

.NET Framework

• {rClr}

JavaScript/HTML/CSS

• {htmltools}
• {packer}

Julia

• {JuliaCall}

Sundry 🗒

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

• {prefixer} (prefix function with their namespace )

• {gitignore} (to fetch gitignore templates)

• {touchstone} (benchmarking pull requests)

• {precommit} (pre-commit hooks)

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