R Observatory: Metrics for desc version 1.4.3

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

desc

1.4.3Package record

Manipulate DESCRIPTION Files

53packages dependsuggested by 25

11.3Mdownloads / year

97.6%test coverage

13/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by Gábor CsárdiCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗Website ↗Issues ↗Declared funder: Posit Software, PBC

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

Changes in 1.4.3

$set() and desc_set() now can omit checks if check = FALSE is set.

From NEWS.md in the release

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. 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-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). 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: 1.3 min · r-release-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 1.4.3

READMEYes · 1,041 wordsVignettesNoNEWSYes · 100% structured · mentions 1.4.3Citation fileNoWebsiteYes · pkgdown

Help pages: 58 (2 internal)includes a package overview page
Examples that run: 100%2 run in a plain check
Exported functions with examples: 4%
Documented parameters: 99%
Return-value docs: 27%
Help pages citing references: 0%

How these are measured

Downloads

11.3M

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #68 · ~31.1K/day · ~945.6K/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

760.3K30 days

2.7M90 days

11.3M1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on155.3K r2u161 autocran429.2K conda_forge7.1K c2d4u

How downloads are counted

Repository

r-lib/desc ↗Organization: r-lib

126Stars

40Forks

16Open issues

2Open PRs

5Releases

423Commits

26Commit identities

r

423 commits · Last activity 2026-09-24 · 0% stars, 30d · Default branch at 1.4.3.9000, ahead of CRAN 1.4.3 (checked 2026-10-11)

Responsiveness

How these are sampled

PRs merged (all time): 79%
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed issues: 94
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed PRs: 1

Stars over time

2025-08-08 · 1242026-08-05 · 126

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

11 development-tooling and community-health practices detected across 5 families in the upstream repository

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

Continuous integration (2)

GitHub ActionsR CMD check workflow

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

Governance and community (1)

Code of conduct

Docs source (4)

README.Rmdpkgdown

GitHub Pages site last deployed 2026-09-24 · The repository has a site deploy workflow

pkgdown site last built 2023-12-10

Coverage (1)

Coverage reporting (Codecov)

Show all practicesHide 1 practice

Lint, format, editor (3)

AirVS CodeRStudio project

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

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

9 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing desc adds 2 packages (1 with compiled code, 692 KB of source tarballs). Heaviest: cli 629 KB, R6 63 KB.

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

53direct

826indirect

Imports 53

Suggested by 25

Show the 48 most downloaded dependentsHide the 48 most downloaded dependents

Depends, Imports or LinkingTo, most downloaded first

and 5 more dependents and 25 packages that suggest it on CRAN ↗

How these are counted

Code & Tests

People & History

People (5)

Gábor Csárdi

Author, Maintainer since 1.0.0 (2016)

Jim Hester

Author · added in 1.2.0

Kirill Müller

Author

Maëlle Salmon

Contributor · added in 1.3.0

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

Releases (10)

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
1.4.3Latest
record
2023-12-10 · current release · diff ↗
R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
1.4.2
record
2022-09-08 · diff ↗
R
R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
1.4.1
record
2022-03-06 · diff ↗
1.4.0
record
2021-09-28 · diff ↗ ·
added 2 exports
desc_get_list, desc_set_list
R
R 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18
1.3.0
record
2021-03-05 · diff ↗ ·
added 3 exports
desc_add_author_gh, desc_add_orcid, desc_coerce_authors_at_r
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24
R
R 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26
1.2.0
record
2018-05-01 · diff ↗ ·
added 2 exports
desc_get_built, desc_get_field
R
R 3.5.0 released · 2018-04-23
1.1.1
record
2017-08-03 · diff ↗

Show 5 earlier eventsHide 5 earlier events

R
R 3.4.0 released · 2017-04-21
1.1.0
record
2017-01-27 · diff ↗ ·
added 16 exports
desc, desc_add_remotes, desc_add_urls, desc_bump_version, desc_clear_remotes, desc_clear_urls, desc_del_remotes, desc_del_urls, desc_get_or_fail, desc_get_remotes, desc_get_urls, desc_get_version, desc_has_dep, desc_set_remotes, desc_set_urls, desc_set_version
1.0.1
record
2016-09-23 · diff ↗
1.0.0
record
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

Appears in task views

Package Development and Maintenance

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 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 desc version 1.4.3 [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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