R Observatory: Metrics for blob version 1.3.0

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

blob

1.3.0Package record

A Simple S3 Class for Representing Vectors of Binary Data ('BLOBS')

9packages dependsuggested by 14

6.5Mdownloads / year

80.8%test coverage

13/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by Kirill MüllerCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗Website ↗Issues ↗Declared funder: RStudio

R's raw vector is useful for storing a single binary object. What if you want to put a vector of them in a data frame? The 'blob' package provides the blob object, a list of raw vectors, suitable for use as a column in data frame.

Changes in 1.3.0

Testing

The upcoming vctrs update changes details on how subset assignment with NULL works. This motivated the minor version bump (@DavisVaughan, #65).

Bug fixes

Fix argument consistency between S3 generics and methods.

Chore

Upkeep (@MikeJohnPage, #55).

From NEWS.md in the release

Install

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

install.packages("blob", 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("tidyverse/blob")

Development version from tidyverse/blob. 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-blob

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-blob

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-blob

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

13OK

CRAN check page ↗

Slowest check: 1.0 min · r-devel-windows-x86_64

Status changes

OK13 OK2026-08-05
NOTE12 OK, 1 NOTE2026-08-01
OK14 OK2026-03-10

Advisories

none known

How this is measured·How advisories are found

Documentation

In release 1.3.0

READMEYes · 136 wordsVignettesNoNEWSYes · 100% structured · mentions 1.3.0Citation fileNoWebsiteYes · pkgdown

Help pages: 5 (3 internal)includes a package overview page
Examples that run: 100%1 run in a plain check
Exported functions with examples: 25%
Documented parameters: 100%
Return-value docs: 0%
Help pages citing references: 0%

How these are measured

Downloads

6.5M

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #131 · ~17.8K/day · ~540.7K/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

459.7K30 days

1.4M90 days

6.5M1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on116.5K r2u159 autocran1.3M conda_forge18.6K c2d4u

How downloads are counted

Repository

tidyverse/blob ↗Organization: tidyverse

50Stars

14Forks

2Open issues

4Open PRs

9Releases

485Commits

10Commit identities

databaser

485 commits · Last activity 2026-10-11 · 0% stars, 30d · Default branch at 1.3.0.9020, ahead of CRAN 1.3.0 (checked 2026-10-11)

Responsiveness

How these are sampled

PRs merged (all time): 97%
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed issues: 164
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed PRs: 0

Stars over time

2025-04-04 · 472026-07-07 · 50

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

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

Checks run against github.com/tidyverse/blob on 2026-10-11.

Continuous integration (2)

GitHub ActionsR CMD check workflow

The R CMD check workflow runs on Linux and Windows

Governance and community (4)

Code of conductContributing guideIssue templatesSupport guide

Docs source (4)

README.Rmdpkgdown

GitHub Pages site last deployed 2026-09-27 · The repository has a site deploy workflow

pkgdown site last built 2026-04-10

Coverage (2)

Coverage reporting (Codecov).covrignore

Show all practicesHide 2 practices

CRAN release process (2)

cran-comments.mdrevdep/

Lint, format, editor (3)

AirVS CodeRStudio project

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

AI coding toolsBeta

This repository shows signs of AI coding tools.

Claude Codefirst seen on or before 2026-05-16
Commits: 1 by its own account · at least 34 crediting it in the message

From outside contributors

Claude Code
Pull requests: 5 from outside contributors, first on 2026-09-12, 5 from forks

Models named in its commits

Claude Opus 58 commits · Aug to Sep 2026
Claude Opus 5.53 commits · Sep 2026
Claude Fable 51 commit · Aug 2026

Counts are commits, not lines of code. Commits by a tool's accounts count once across all of its accounts. Commits crediting it are the largest count among its credit lines, a minimum.How this is detected·Detection ruleset v4 (updated 2026-09-27)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

6 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing blob adds 5 packages (4 with compiled code, 2.6 MB of source tarballs). Heaviest: vctrs 1.0 MB, rlang 766 KB, cli 629 KB.

Depends (0)

none

Imports (3)

methodsrlang vctrs

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (4)

covr crayon pillar testthat

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

9direct

431indirect

Imports 9

Suggested by 14

Show all 23 packagesHide all 23 packages

Depends, Imports or LinkingTo, most downloaded first

dbplyr RSQLite odbc RPostgres RMariaDB DBItest tfevents ragnar Rparadox

Suggests, most downloaded first

tibble DBI sf arrow nanoarrow nanoparquet bigrquery bigrquerystorage dbx ipaddress bcputility b64 GeoTox b32

How these are counted

Code & Tests

People & History

People (3)

Kirill Müller

Maintainer since 1.1.0 (2017) · added in 1.1.0

Hadley Wickham

Author

RStudio

Copyright holder, Funder

Previously maintained by Hadley Wickham (1.0.0).

Releases (9)

Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.

R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
1.3.0Latest
record
2026-01-14 · current release · diff ↗
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24
R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
1.2.4
record
2023-03-17 · diff ↗
R
R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
1.2.3
record
2022-04-10 · diff ↗
1.2.2
record
2021-07-23 · diff ↗
R
R 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24
1.2.1
record
2020-01-20 · diff ↗
1.2.0
record
2019-07-09 · diff ↗ ·
added 5 exports
as_blob, is_blob, validate_blob, vec_cast.blob, vec_ptype2.blob
R
R 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26
R
R 3.5.0 released · 2018-04-23
1.1.1
record
2018-03-25 · diff ↗

Show 4 earlier eventsHide 4 earlier events

1.1.0
record
2017-06-17 · diff ↗
R
R 3.4.0 released · 2017-04-21
1.0.0
record
2016-12-29
R
R 3.3.0 released · 2016-05-03

Package metadata

First published: 2016-12-29
Total releases: 9 / 10 yrs
License: MIT + file LICENSE OSI · relicensed from GPL-3 in 1.2.2
Download size: 11 KB

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("blob")

Format

Müller, K., RStudio, & Wickham, H. (2026). blob: A Simple S3 Class for Representing Vectors of Binary Data ('BLOBS') (Version 1.3.0) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.blob

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 blob version 1.3.0 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-10-18. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-10-18, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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