R Observatory: Metrics for desc version 1.4.3

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

desc

1.4.3

Manipulate DESCRIPTION Files

78packages depend

10.5Mdownloads / year

97.6%test coverage

13/13checks pass

Overview

About

Maintained by Gábor CsárdiFirst published 2016-05-1410 releasesCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗

Tools to read, write, create, and manipulate DESCRIPTION files. It is intended for packages that create or manipulate other packages.

Install

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

install.packages("desc", 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/desc")

Development version from r-lib/desc. 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-desc

Fast Ubuntu binaries via r2u (no compilation). The cranapt setup runs once and is skipped when it is already enabled.

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-desc

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-desc

RPMs auto-built from CRAN on openSUSE OBS (Tumbleweed).

Health

CRAN checks

13OK

Slowest check: 1.3 min · r-oldrel-windows-x86_64

Code health

Yes

Tests · ratio 0.76

97.6%

Coverage · measured lines

100%

Documentation · exports

3

Dependencies · direct

Check history

OK2026-08-05
13 OK · 0 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
NOTE2026-08-01
12 OK · 1 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
OK2026-03-10
14 OK · 0 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE

Documentation

READMEYes · 1,041 wordsVignettesNopkgdown siteNoNEWSYes · 100% structuredCode of conductNoContributing guideNo

Examples that run: 100%
Documented parameters: 99%
Return-value docs: 27%
References docs: 0%

Downloads

10.5M

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #50 · ~28.9K/day · ~879K/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

1.1M30 days

3.3M90 days

10.5M1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on124.4K r2u105 autocran414.3K conda_forge4.3K c2d4u

Repository

GitHub ↗ r-lib/desc

126Stars

37Forks

19Open issues

3Open PRs

5Releases

418Commits

24Contributors

r

418 commits · Last activity 2025-10-21 · +0.8% stars, 30d

Stars over time

2025-08-08 · 1242026-08-05 · 126

Repository practices

Upstream repositoryBeta

6 development-tooling and community-health practices detected across 4 families in the upstream repository

Checks run against github.com/r-lib/desc on 2026-08-09.

Continuous integration (1)

GitHub Actions

Docs source (1)

README.Rmd

Lint, format, editor (3)

AirVS CodeRStudio project

Coverage (1)

Codecov

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v1 (2026-07-18)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

9 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Depends (1)

R >= 3.4

Imports (3)

cli R6utils

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (7)

callr covr gh spelling testthat whoami withr

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

78direct

830indirect

and 30 more packages.

Code & Tests

People & History

People (5)

Maintainer (1)

Gábor Csárdi

Author, Maintainer

Authors (3)

Gábor Csárdi

Author, Maintainer

Jim Hester

Author · added in 1.2.0

Kirill Müller

Author

Contributors (1)

Maëlle Salmon

Contributor · added in 1.3.0

Copyright holders (1)

Posit Software, PBC

Copyright holder, Funder · added in 1.4.3

Funders (1)

Posit Software, PBC

Copyright holder, Funder · added in 1.4.3

Listed in earlier versions (1)

RStudio

no longer listed · 1.4.1 to 1.4.2

Package Timeline

10 releases. Pick two to compare their code metrics. R releases are shown for context.

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
1.4.3Latest
2023-12-10 · current release · diff ↗
R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
1.4.2
2022-09-08 · diff ↗
R
R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
1.4.1
2022-03-06 · diff ↗
1.4.0
2021-09-28 · diff ↗
R
R 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18
1.3.0
2021-03-05 · diff ↗
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24
R
R 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26
1.2.0
2018-05-01 · diff ↗
R
R 3.5.0 released · 2018-04-23
1.1.1
2017-08-03 · diff ↗

Show 5 earlier events

R
R 3.4.0 released · 2017-04-21
1.1.0
2017-01-27 · diff ↗
1.0.1
2016-09-23 · diff ↗
1.0.0
2016-05-14
R
R 3.3.0 released · 2016-05-03

Package metadata

First published: 2016-05-14
Total releases: 10 / 10 yrs
License: MIT + file LICENSE OSI
Minimum R: ≥ 3.4
Download size: 78 KB
Installed size: not tracked yet
With dependencies: not tracked yet

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("desc")

Format

Csárdi, G., Posit Software, PBC, Hester, J., Müller, K., & Salmon, M. (2023). desc: Manipulate DESCRIPTION Files (Version 1.4.3) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.desc

This is what citation() produces when a package has no citation file of its own. If it prints something else, use that.

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 desc version 1.4.3 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-08-14. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-08-14, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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