R Observatory: Metrics for R6 version 2.6.1

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

R6

2.6.1Package record

Encapsulated Classes with Reference Semantics

695packages dependsuggested by 48

21.9Mdownloads / year

–test coverage

12/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by Winston ChangCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗Website ↗Issues ↗Declared funder: Posit Software, PBC

Creates classes with reference semantics, similar to R's built-in reference classes. Compared to reference classes, R6 classes are simpler and lighter-weight, and they are not built on S4 classes so they do not require the methods package. These classes allow public and private members, and they support inheritance, even when the classes are defined in different packages.

Changes in 2.6.1

Closed #298: In .DollarNames.R6(), avoid use of NextMethod(). This is to work around a compatibility issue with RStudio IDE. (#299)

From NEWS.md in the release

Install

R (CRAN)pak (dev)Ubuntu (r2u)Fedora (COPR)openSUSE (OBS)

install.packages("R6", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")

Installs the current CRAN release. Prebuilt binaries on Windows and macOS.

if (!requireNamespace("pak", quietly = TRUE))
  install.packages("pak", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")
pak::pak("r-lib/R6")

Development version from r-lib/R6. Installs pak first if it is not already available.

Release

# enable cranapt (r2u) if it is not already set up, then install
grep -rqs r2u.stat.illinois.edu /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ \
  || curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eddelbuettel/r2u/master/inst/scripts/add_cranapt_noble.sh | sudo bash
sudo apt install -y r-cran-r6

Fast Ubuntu binaries via r2u (no compilation). The cranapt setup runs once and is skipped when it is already enabled. We list this channel from recorded r2u download activity rather than from a live index of the repository, so treat it as last known rather than guaranteed.

bspm (used by r2u) also needs make: sudo apt install make

# enable the iucar/cran COPR if it is not already present, then install
ls /etc/yum.repos.d/*iucar*cran*.repo >/dev/null 2>&1 \
  || sudo dnf copr enable -y iucar/cran
sudo dnf install -y R-CRAN-R6

RPMs from the iucar/cran COPR, rebuilt from CRAN.

For install.packages() integration in R, also: sudo dnf install R-CoprManager

# add the autoCRAN OBS repo (Tumbleweed) if it is missing, then install
zypper -q lr | grep -qi autoCRAN \
  || sudo zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/R:/autoCRAN/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/devel:languages:R:autoCRAN.repo
sudo zypper install -y R-R6

RPMs auto-built from CRAN on openSUSE OBS (Tumbleweed). We list this channel from recorded autoCRAN download activity rather than from a live index of the repository, so treat it as last known rather than guaranteed.

Health

CRAN checks

1ERROR12OK

Check messages

ERRORtestsr-oldrel-macos-arm64

Running ‘testthat.R’ [0s/1s]
Running the tests in ‘tests/testthat.R’ failed.
Complete output:
  > library(testthat)
  > library(R6)
  > 
  > test_check("R6")
  Error in loadNamespace(x) : there is no package called 'cli'
  Calls: test_check ... loadNamespace -> withRestarts -> withOneRestart -> doWithOneRestart
  Execution halted

CRAN check page ↗

Slowest check: 1.1 min · r-devel-windows-x86_64

Status changes

ERROR12 OK, 1 ERRORNow
ERROR13 OK, 1 ERROR2026-03-10

Advisories

none known

How this is measured·How advisories are found

Documentation

In release 2.6.1

READMEYes · 272 wordsVignettes· In the repository, left out of the releaseNEWSYes · 33% structured · mentions 2.6.1Citation fileNoWebsiteYes · pkgdown

Help pages: 4 (1 internal)includes a package overview page
Examples that run: 100%2 run in a plain check
Exported functions with examples: 100%
Documented parameters: 100%
Return-value docs: 50%
Help pages citing references: 0%

How these are measured

Downloads

21.9M

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #6 · ~60K/day · ~1.8M/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

1.7M30 days

5.8M90 days

21.9M1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on259.2K r2u146 autocran2.4M conda_forge24.8K c2d4u

How downloads are counted

Repository

r-lib/r6 ↗Organization: r-lib

426Stars

59Forks

53Open issues

3Open PRs

4Releases

601Commits

20Commit identities

r

601 commits · Last activity 2025-10-20 · +0.2% stars, 30d · Default branch at 2.6.1.9000, ahead of CRAN 2.6.1 (checked 2026-10-11)

Responsiveness

How these are sampled

PRs merged (all time): 72%
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed issues: 4
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed PRs: 1

Stars over time

2025-07-14 · 4212026-10-03 · 426

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

8 development-tooling and community-health practices detected across 6 families in the upstream repository

Checks run against github.com/r-lib/r6 on 2026-10-11.

Continuous integration (1)

GitHub Actions

Governance and community (1)

CODEOWNERS

Docs source (3)

pkgdown

GitHub Pages site last deployed 2025-10-20 · The repository has a site deploy workflow

pkgdown site last built 2025-02-19

Coverage (1)

Coverage reporting (Codecov)

Show all practicesHide 2 practices

Lint, format, editor (1)

RStudio project

Git structural (1)

.gitattributes

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v3 (2026-09-26)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

2 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing R6 adds no packages beyond those that come with R.

Depends (1)

R >= 3.6

Imports (0)

none

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (2)

lobstr testthat

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

695direct

11,561indirect

Depends 17 · Imports 678

Suggested by 48

Show the 48 most downloaded dependentsHide the 48 most downloaded dependents

Depends, Imports or LinkingTo, most downloaded first

and 647 more dependents and 48 packages that suggest it on CRAN ↗

How these are counted

Code & Tests

People & History

People (2)

Winston Chang

Author, Maintainer

Posit Software, PBC

Copyright holder, Funder · added in 2.6.0

Maintainer since 1.0.1 (2014)

Releases (17)

Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.

R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
2.6.1Latest
record
2025-02-15 · current release · diff ↗
2.6.0
record
2025-02-12 · diff ↗
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24
R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
R
R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
2.5.1
record
2021-08-19 · diff ↗
R
R 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18
2.5.0
record
2020-10-28 · diff ↗
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24
2.4.1
record
2019-11-12 · diff ↗
R
R 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26
2.4.0
record
2019-02-14 · diff ↗
2.3.0
record
2018-10-04 · diff ↗
R
R 3.5.0 released · 2018-04-23

Show 14 earlier eventsHide 14 earlier events

2.2.2
record
2017-06-17 · diff ↗
2.2.1
record
2017-05-10 · diff ↗
R
R 3.4.0 released · 2017-04-21
2.2.0
record
2016-10-05 · diff ↗ ·
added 2 exports
is.R6, is.R6Class
2.1.3
record
2016-08-19 · diff ↗
R
R 3.3.0 released · 2016-05-03
2.1.2
record
2016-01-26 · diff ↗
2.1.1
record
2015-08-19 · diff ↗
2.1.0
record
2015-07-04 · diff ↗
R
R 3.2.0 released · 2015-04-16
2.0.1
record
2014-10-29 · diff ↗
2.0
record
2014-08-19 · diff ↗
1.0.1
record
2014-07-17
R
R 3.1.0 released · 2014-04-10

Package metadata

First published: 2014-07-17
Total releases: 17 / 12 yrs
License: MIT + file LICENSE OSI
Minimum R: ≥ 3.6
Download size: 63 KB

Appears in task views

Databases with R

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("R6")

Format

Chang, W., & Posit Software, PBC. (2025). R6: Encapsulated Classes with Reference Semantics (Version 2.6.1) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.R6

This package has no citation file, so citation() returns this entry built from DESCRIPTION.

Cite the R Observatory

For a number measured here: a download total, a coverage figure, an archival date.

Format

APA

Balamuta, J. J. (2026). R Observatory: Metrics for R6 version 2.6.1 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-10-19. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-10-19, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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