R Observatory: Metrics for RcppHNSW version 0.7.0

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

RcppHNSW

0.7.0Package record

'Rcpp' Bindings for 'hnswlib', a Library for Approximate Nearest Neighbors

5packages dependsuggested by 2

520.8Kdownloads / year

82.3%test coverage

12/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by James MelvilleCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗Issues ↗

'Hnswlib' is a C++ library for Approximate Nearest Neighbors. This package provides a minimal R interface by relying on the 'Rcpp' package. See https://github.com/nmslib/hnswlib for more on 'hnswlib'. 'hnswlib' is released under Version 2.0 of the Apache License.

Changes in 0.7.0

New features

New class: HnswEuclidean. This uses Euclidean distances internally and will

be returned from hnsw_build when distance = "euclidean" is specified. This

fixes an issue where if you created an index with hnsw_build and

distance = "euclidean" (the default), then after saving, you would be unable

to reload the index and have it find Euclidean distances. You would have to

create it as an HsnwL2 object and take the square root of the distances

yourself (<https://github.com/jlmelville/rcpphnsw/issues/21>).

The Hnsw constructors and the hnsw_build and hnsw_knn functions now

expose a random_seed parameter that you can use to set the random seed used

in constructing the HNSW index. If not provided, the the hnswlib default of

100 is used (and should preserve previous behavior). Based on a request by

Show all changes in 0.7.0Hide the rest of the changes in 0.7.0

Maciej Beręsewicz

(<https://github.com/jlmelville/rcpphnsw/issues/23>).

From NEWS.md in the release

Install

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

install.packages("RcppHNSW", 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("jlmelville/rcpphnsw")

Development version from jlmelville/rcpphnsw. 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-rcpphnsw

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-RcppHNSW

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-RcppHNSW

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-patched-linux-x86_64

Running ‘testthat.R’ [3s/4s]
Running the tests in ‘tests/testthat.R’ failed.
Complete output:
  > library(testthat)
  > library(RcppHNSW)
  > 
  > test_check("RcppHNSW")
  Saving _problems/test_parallel-45.R
  Saving _problems/test_parallel-46.R
  [ FAIL 2 | WARN 0 | SKIP 0 | PASS 81 ]
  
  ══ Failed tests ════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
  ── Failure ('test_parallel.R:45:1'): (code run outside of `test_that()`) ───────
  Expected `mean(knn_0$dist - knn_2$dist)` < 1e-04.
  Actual comparison: 0.0001025 >= 0.0001000
  Difference: 0.0000025 >= 0
  ── Failure ('test_parallel.R:46:1'): (code run outside of `test_that()`) ───────
  Expected `mean(knn_1$dist - knn_2$dist)` < 1e-04.
  Actual comparison: 0.0001025 >= 0.0001000
  Difference: 0.0000025 >= 0
  
  [ FAIL 2 | WARN 0 | SKIP 0 | PASS 81 ]
  Error:
  ! Test failures.
  Execution halted

CRAN check page ↗

Slowest check: 3.3 min · r-devel-windows-x86_64

Status changes

ERROR12 OK, 1 ERROR2026-10-22
OK13 OK2026-09-21
ERROR12 OK, 1 ERROR2026-09-20
OK13 OK2026-09-08
ERROR12 OK, 1 ERROR2026-09-07

Show 6 earlier changesHide 6 earlier changes

OK13 OK2026-08-05
NOTE12 OK, 1 NOTE2026-08-01
OK12 OK2026-04-25
NOTE12 OK, 2 NOTE2026-04-22
ERROR11 OK, 2 NOTE, 1 ERROR2026-04-18
NOTE12 OK, 2 NOTE2026-03-10

Advisories

none known

How this is measured·How advisories are found

Documentation

In release 0.7.0

README· In the repository, left out of the releaseVignettesNoNEWSYes · 100% structured · mentions 0.7.0Citation fileNo

The repository also keeps web-only articles.

Help pages: 4includes a package overview page
Examples that run: 100%3 run in a plain check
Exported functions with examples: 100%
Documented parameters: not tracked
Return-value docs: not tracked
Help pages citing references: 50%

How these are measured

Downloads

520.8K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #520 · ~1.4K/day · ~43.4K/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

45K30 days

137.6K90 days

520.8K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on23.6K r2u6 autocran185K conda_forge63 c2d4u

How downloads are counted

Repository

jlmelville/rcpphnsw ↗Account: jlmelville

42Stars

11Forks

2Open issues

0Open PRs

11Releases

346Commits

8Commit identities

rrcppapproximate-nearest-neighbor-searchnmslibhnswk-nearest-neighborsnearest-neighbor-searchknn

License file reads as GPL-3.0 · 346 commits · Last activity 2026-10-18 · 0% stars, 30d · Default branch at 0.7.0.9001, ahead of CRAN 0.7.0 (checked 2026-10-18)

Responsiveness

How these are sampled

PRs merged (all time): 96%
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed issues: 40
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed PRs: 1

Stars over time

2025-06-18 · 372026-07-07 · 42

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

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

Checks run against github.com/jlmelville/rcpphnsw on 2026-10-18.

Continuous integration (2)

GitHub ActionsR CMD check workflow

The R CMD check workflow runs on Linux, macOS and Windows, and on R-devel

Docs source (3)

pkgdown

GitHub Pages site last deployed 2026-10-18 · The repository has a site deploy workflow

Coverage (1)

Coverage reporting (Codecov)

CRAN release process (1)

cran-comments.md

Show all practicesHide 2 practices

Automation and maintenance (1)

Dependabot

Lint, format, editor (4)

lintrLint workflowAirRStudio project

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

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

4 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing RcppHNSW adds 1 package (1 with compiled code, 1.8 MB of source tarballs). Heaviest: Rcpp 1.8 MB.

Depends (0)

none

Imports (2)

methodsRcpp

LinkingTo (1)

Rcpp

Suggests (2)

covr testthat

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

5direct

49indirect

Imports 5

Suggested by 2

Depends, Imports or LinkingTo, most downloaded first

Seurat rTLS blocking DamageDetective Cleanet

Suggests, most downloaded first

uwot adjoin

How these are counted

Code & Tests

People & History

People (5)

James Melville

Samuel Granjeaud

Contributor · added in 0.3.0

Yuxing Liao

Contributor · added in 0.3.0

Aaron Lun

Contributor

Dmitriy Selivanov

Contributor · added in 0.3.0

Releases (8)

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
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24
0.7.0Latest
record
2024-02-04 · current release · diff ↗
0.6.0
record
2024-02-04 · diff ↗
0.5.0
record
2023-09-19 · diff ↗ ·
removed 6 exports
hnsw_knn, hnsw_build, hnsw_search, HnswL2, HnswCosine, HnswIp

added 1 export
pattern:^[Hh]nsw
R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
0.4.1
record
2022-07-18 · diff ↗
0.4.0
record
2022-07-17 · diff ↗
R
R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
R
R 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18
0.3.0
record
2020-09-06 · diff ↗
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24
0.2.0
record
2019-09-20 · diff ↗
R
R 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26
0.1.0
record
2019-01-22

Show 1 earlier eventHide 1 earlier event

R
R 3.5.0 released · 2018-04-23

Package metadata

First published: 2019-01-22
Total releases: 8 / 7 yrs
License: GPL (>= 3) OSI
Download size: 38 KB

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("RcppHNSW")

Format

Melville, J., Granjeaud, S., Liao, Y., Lun, A., & Selivanov, D. (2026). RcppHNSW: 'Rcpp' Bindings for 'hnswlib', a Library for Approximate Nearest Neighbors (Version 0.7.0) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.RcppHNSW

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 RcppHNSW version 0.7.0 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-10-22. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-10-22, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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