We are excited to announce that R-Universe has been awarded a Google Season of Docs grant. R-Universe is rOpenSci’s platform for testing, building, distributing, and discovering R packages, led by Jeroen Ooms.

Abstract / TLDR R-universe now provides MacOS arm64 binaries for all R packages.

Abstract / TLDR R-universe now builds WASM binaries of all R packages for use in WebR applications (such as shinylive). For example to test the dev version of dplyr, you can open the WebR demo page and run: install.packages('dplyr', repos = c('https://tidyverse.r-universe.dev', 'https://repo.r-wasm.org')) As explained below, not all R packages are supported yet;

The R-Universe is used by professionals from different fields, although they all pursue the same objective: to offer their R packages in a simple and accessible way . At rOpenSci we work to provide tools that facilitate access to data and research software generated with good software development practices and in a friendly community.

A new post of our interview series “Meeting the stars of the R-universe”. We aim to introduce the teams and people behind the development of software and packages many of us use and which are available through the R-Universe. We want to highlight and explore different teams and projects around the world, the work they do, their processes and users.

Summary Installing a package that has just been released to CRAN is painful for many users on Mac and Windows because often the difference between a ‘binary’ and a ‘source’ version is not immediately clear and they end up trying to install the source version, which leads to errors and heartbreak.When I was designing The Carpentries Workbench, I needed to make sure that people could reliably install R packages at any time

Introducing cran.dev shortlinks! On r-universe you can find package repositories from many different organizations and maintainers. But sometimes you just want to lookup a particular CRAN package, without knowing the developer.The new cran.dev shortlink service lets you navigate or link directly to the r-universe homepage and docs of any established CRAN package.

A new post of our interview series “Meeting the stars of the R-universe”. We aim to introduce the teams and people behind the development of software and packages many of us use and which are available through the R-Universe. We want to highlight and explore different teams and projects around the world, the work they do, their processes and users. Our third stop is the United States to talk with members of the PEcAn project.

Downloading repository snapshots The new snapshot API lets you download a full copy of any CRAN-like repository on r-universe. You can use such a snapshot to mirror the entire CRAN-like repository on your own servers, or for example to build a stable, validated release of your package suite. The API endpoint is simply /api/snapshot and has several options to filter content.

How packages appear in r-universe Last month we explained how r-universe makes it easy to search and browse through the countless R packages, articles, and datasets to let you discover and learn new things. We are continuously growing this database by adding more R projects, to guide you through everything the R ecosystem has to offer. Currently r-universe is tracking and indexing of over 18.000 R packages.