![List-of-r-packages](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/List-of-r-packages.png)
R packages are
extensions
Extension, extend or extended may refer to:
Mathematics
Logic or set theory
* Axiom of extensionality
* Extensible cardinal
* Extension (model theory)
* Extension (predicate logic), the set of tuples of values that satisfy the predicate
* E ...
to the
R statistical programming language. R packages contain code, data, and documentation in a standardised collection format that can be installed by users of R, typically via a centralised
software repository
A software repository, or repo for short, is a storage location for software packages. Often a table of contents is also stored, along with metadata. A software repository is typically managed by source control or repository managers. Package ...
such as CRAN (the Comprehensive R Archive Network).
The large number of packages available for R, and the ease of installing and using them, has been cited as a major factor driving the widespread adoption of the language in
data science
Data science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge and insights from noisy, structured and unstructured data, and apply knowledge from data across a br ...
.
Compared to
libraries
A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...
in other programming language, R packages must conform to a relatively strict specification.
The ''Writing R Extensions'' manual specifies a standard
directory structure
In computing, a directory structure is the way an operating system arranges Computer file, files that are accessible to the user. Files are typically displayed in a hierarchical tree structure.
File names and extensions
A filename is a string use ...
for R source code, data, documentation, and package metadata, which enables them to be installed and loaded using R's in-built
package management
A package manager or package-management system is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer in a consistent manner.
A package manager deals w ...
tools.
Packages distributed on CRAN must meet additional standards.
According to
John Chambers, whilst these requirements "impose considerable demands" on package developers, they improve the
usability
Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a soft ...
and long-term stability of packages for end users.
Repositories
Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN)
The Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) is R's central
software repository
A software repository, or repo for short, is a storage location for software packages. Often a table of contents is also stored, along with metadata. A software repository is typically managed by source control or repository managers. Package ...
, supported by the R Foundation.
It contains an archive of the latest and previous versions of the R distribution, documentation, and contributed R packages.
It includes both
source packages and pre-
compiled
In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that ...
binaries
A binary file is a computer file that is not a text file. The term "binary file" is often used as a term meaning "non-text file". Many binary file formats contain parts that can be interpreted as text; for example, some computer document fil ...
for
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
and
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
. , more than 16,000 packages are available. CRAN was created by
Kurt Hornik and
Friedrich Leisch Friedrich may refer to:
Names
*Friedrich (surname), people with the surname ''Friedrich''
*Friedrich (given name), people with the given name ''Friedrich''
Other
*Friedrich (board game), a board game about Frederick the Great and the Seven Years' ...
in 1997, with the name paralleling other early packing systems such as
TeX
Tex may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Tex (nickname), a list of people and fictional characters with the nickname
* Joe Tex (1933–1982), stage name of American soul singer Joseph Arrington Jr.
Entertainment
* ''Tex'', the Italian ...
's
CTAN
CTAN (an acronym for "Comprehensive TeX Archive Network") is the authoritative place where TeX related material and software can be found for download. Repositories for other projects, such as the MiKTeX distribution of TeX, constantly mirror mo ...
(released 1992) and
Perl
Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offici ...
's
CPAN
The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) is a repository of over 250,000 software modules and accompanying documentation for 39,000 distributions, written in the Perl programming language by over 12,000 contributors. ''CPAN'' can denote eith ...
(released 1995). , it is still maintained by Hornik and a team of volunteers.
The master site is located at the
Vienna University of Economics and Business
The Vienna University of Economics and Business (german: Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, WU) is a public research university in Vienna, Austria, the largest university focusing on business, management and economics in Europe. It has been ranked a ...
and is
mirrored
''Mirrored'' is the debut studio album by American experimental rock band Battles. It was released on May 14, 2007 in the United Kingdom, and on May 22, 2007 in the United States. ''Mirrored'' marked the first album in which the band incorporated ...
on servers around the world.
The "Task Views" page (subject list) on the CRAN website
lists a wide range of tasks (in fields such as finance, genetics, high performance computing, machine learning, medical imaging,
meta-analysis
A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies. Meta-analyses can be performed when there are multiple scientific studies addressing the same question, with each individual study reporting me ...
, social sciences and spatial statistics) for which R packages are available. Another way to browse CRAN packages is provided by Metacran,
which also maintains lists of featured, most downloaded, trending or most depended upon packages.
The number of CRAN packages has
grown exponentially for many years, and an average of 21 submissions of new or updated packages were made every day.
Since each submission is manually reviewed by a small team of CRAN maintainers, many of whom, according to R core developer
Peter Dalgaard
Peter may refer to:
People
* List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name
* Peter (given name)
** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church
* Peter (surname), a su ...
, are "approaching pensionable age", there is a concern that this system is not sustainable in the long term.
The growth of CRAN has exposed limitations of its
dependency management infrastructure, particularly the fact that it assumes that dependencies always refer to the latest version of a package, meaning that new releases of CRAN packages must always be
backwards compatible, and that CRAN packages cannot have dependencies that are not on CRAN. It has also led to concerns about declining quality of packages.
MRAN and RStudio Package Manager
The Microsoft R Application Network (MRAN) is a mirror of CRAN maintained by
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
which is based on the company's downstream distribution of R,
Microsoft R Open
Revolution Analytics (formerly REvolution Computing) is a statistical software company focused on developing open source and "open-core" versions of the free and open source software R for enterprise, academic and analytics customers. Revolution ...
(formerly Revolution R Open). It also includes an archive of daily CRAN snapshots, branded as the "CRAN Time Machine", which enables users of MRAN to bypass the dependency versioning limitations of CRAN by installing a fixed set of R package versions via the package checkpoint.
RStudio Package Manager is a similar tool produced by
RStudio
RStudio is an integrated development environment for R, a programming language for statistical computing and graphics. It is available in two formats: RStudio Desktop is a regular desktop application while RStudio Server runs on a remote server ...
, which in addition to CRAN snapshots includes an archive of R packages from Bioconductor and
Python
Python may refer to:
Snakes
* Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia
** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia
* Python (mythology), a mythical serpent
Computing
* Python (pro ...
packages from the
Python Package Index
The Python Package Index, abbreviated as PyPI () and also known as the Cheese Shop (a reference to the ''Monty Python's Flying Circus'' sketch " Cheese Shop"), is the official third-party software repository for Python. It is analogous to the C ...
.
It also distributes pre-compiled binary packages for Linux (only Windows and macOS binaries are included on CRAN).
Other repositories
The
Bioconductor
Bioconductor is a Free software, free, Open-source software, open source and Open source software development, open development software project for the analysis and comprehension of Genome, genomic data generated by Wet laboratory, wet lab experi ...
project provides R packages for the analysis of genomic data. This includes object-oriented data-handling and analysis tools for data from
Affymetrix
Affymetrix is now Applied Biosystems, a brand of DNA microarray products sold by Thermo Fisher Scientific that originated with an American biotechnology research and development and manufacturing company of the same name. The Santa Clara, Califor ...
,
cDNA
In genetics, complementary DNA (cDNA) is DNA synthesized from a single-stranded RNA (e.g., messenger RNA (mRNA) or microRNA (miRNA)) template in a reaction catalyzed by the enzyme reverse transcriptase. cDNA is often used to express a speci ...
microarray
A microarray is a multiplex lab-on-a-chip. Its purpose is to simultaneously detect the expression of thousands of genes from a sample (e.g. from a tissue). It is a two-dimensional array on a solid substrate—usually a glass slide or silicon t ...
, and next-generation
high-throughput sequencing
DNA sequencing is the process of determining the nucleic acid sequence – the order of nucleotides in DNA. It includes any method or technology that is used to determine the order of the four bases: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. The ...
methods.
R-Forge, is a central platform for the collaborative development of R packages, R-related software, and projects. R-Forge also hosts many unpublished beta packages, and development versions of CRAN packages.
Base and recommended packages
R is distributed with fifteen "base packages": base, compiler, datasets, grDevices, graphics, grid, methods, parallel, splines, stats, stats4, tcltk, tools, translations, and utils.
In addition, there are fifteen "recommended packages" from CRAN which are included with binary distributions of R: KernSmooth, MASS, Matrix, boot, class, cluster, codetools, foreign, lattice, mgcv, nlme, nnet, rpart, spatial, and survival.
Other packages
A group of packages called the
Tidyverse
The tidyverse is a collection of open source packages for the R programming language introduced by Hadley Wickham and his team that "share an underlying design philosophy, grammar, and data structures" of tidy data. Characteristic features of t ...
, which can be considered a "dialect of the R language", is increasingly popular in the R ecosystem. As of 2020-06-13, Metacran
listed 7 of the 8 core packages of the Tidyverse in the list of most download R packages. The group of packages strives to provide a cohesive collection of functions to deal with common data science tasks, including data import, cleaning, transformation and visualisation (notably with the
ggplot2
ggplot2 is an open-source data visualization package for the statistical programming language R. Created by Hadley Wickham in 2005, ggplot2 is an implementation of Leland Wilkinson's ''Grammar of Graphics''—a general scheme for data visu ...
package).
The R Infrastructure packages
support coding and the development of R packages and as of 2021-05-04, Metacran
lists 16 of these packages among the 25 most downloaded packages.
See also
*
Tidyverse
The tidyverse is a collection of open source packages for the R programming language introduced by Hadley Wickham and his team that "share an underlying design philosophy, grammar, and data structures" of tidy data. Characteristic features of t ...
*
ggplot2
ggplot2 is an open-source data visualization package for the statistical programming language R. Created by Hadley Wickham in 2005, ggplot2 is an implementation of Leland Wilkinson's ''Grammar of Graphics''—a general scheme for data visu ...
*
knitr
knitr is an engine for dynamic report generation with R. It is a package in the programming language R that enables integration of R code into LaTeX, LyX, HTML, Markdown, AsciiDoc, and reStructuredText documents. The purpose of knitr is to allow ...
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
External links
The Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN)
METACRAN a directory of R packages
CRAN Task Views listing of CRAN packages by topics
{{R (programming language)
R (programming language)