R Observatory: Metrics for forestplot version 3.2.0

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

forestplot

3.2.0Package record

Advanced Forest Plot Using 'grid' Graphics

16packages dependsuggested by 1

182.8Kdownloads / year

77.0%test coverage

8/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by Max GordonCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗Website ↗Issues ↗

Allows the creation of forest plots with advanced features, such as multiple confidence intervals per row, customizable fonts for individual text elements, and flexible confidence interval drawing. It also supports mixing text with mathematical expressions. The package extends the application of forest plots beyond traditional meta-analyses, offering a more general version of the original 'rmeta' package’s forestplot() function. It relies heavily on the 'grid' package for rendering the plots.

Changes in 3.2.0

Added input validation: error if a mean lies outside its confidence limits or if a lower bound exceeds its upper bound. Prevents missing boxes and internal Inf/logical errors when working with negative estimates.
New fp_span() helper (and span attribute) allows a label to occupy multiple text columns. Useful for centering sub‑headers such as "Events / N" beneath several adjacent columns.
New fp_extract_labeltext() helper simplifies label column extraction for both grouped and ungrouped data, with optional column renaming and NA replacement.
New selector-style post-processing helpers fp_align_where(), fp_txt_where(), and fp_span_where() allow row/column/cell targeted alignment, text styling, and spanning directly on gforge_forestplot objects.

Show all changes in 3.2.0Hide the rest of the changes in 3.2.0

New fp_set_summary() helper allows setting summary rows on existing gforge_forestplot objects using selector-style predicates in a pipe flow.
Internal label handling now tolerates grid grobs and other non-atomic objects in labeltext. Previously such values could trigger coercion errors during preparation; these are now treated as valid content.
New fp_set_favors() helper allows setting the "favors" text on existing gforge_forestplot objects in a pipe flow.

From NEWS.md in the release

Install

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

install.packages("forestplot", 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("gforge/forestplot")

Development version from gforge/forestplot. 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-forestplot

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-forestplot

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-forestplot

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

5NOTE8OK

Check messages

NOTER code for possible problemsr-devel-linux-x86_64-debian-clang, r-devel-linux-x86_64-debian-gcc, r-devel-linux-x86_64-fedora-clang, r-devel-linux-x86_64-fedora-gcc, r-devel-windows-x86_64

Found calls to structure() using deprecated special names:
  forestplot/tests/test_visual_w_cochrane_mdata.R (.Names: 1)
  forestplot/tests/vtest_from_vignette.R (.Names: 1)
'.Names' should be changed to 'names'.

CRAN check page ↗

Slowest check: 3.0 min · r-oldrel-macos-x86_64

Status changes

NOTE8 OK, 5 NOTENow
NOTE11 OK, 2 NOTE2026-07-16
OK13 OK2026-06-09
ERROR12 OK, 1 ERROR2026-06-07
OK14 OK2026-03-10

Advisories

none known

How this is measured·How advisories are found

Documentation

In release 3.2.0

READMEYes · 208 wordsVignettesYes · 1 · dynamicNEWSYes · 100% structured · mentions 3.2.0Citation fileNoWebsiteYes

Help pages: 54 (22 internal)includes a package overview page
Examples that run: 100%20 run in a plain check
Exported functions with examples: 76%
Documented parameters: 94%
Return-value docs: 100%
Help pages citing references: 0%

Vignettes (1)

Introduction to forest plots

How these are measured

Downloads

182.8K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #1,023 · ~501/day · ~15.2K/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

10.9K30 days

37.9K90 days

182.8K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on722 r2u7 autocran4.8K conda_forge137 c2d4u

How downloads are counted

Repository

gforge/forestplot ↗Account: gforge

52Stars

17Forks

2Open issues

0Open PRs

2Releases

227Commits

4Commit identities

forestplotcranr

227 commits · Last activity 2026-03-03 · 0% stars, 30d

Responsiveness

How these are sampled

PRs merged (all time): 100%
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed issues: 5
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed PRs: 0

Stars over time

2025-10-23 · 472026-07-07 · 52

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

4 development-tooling and community-health practices detected across 3 families in the upstream repository

Checks run against github.com/gforge/forestplot on 2026-10-21.

Continuous integration (1)

Travis CI (config file)

CRAN release process (2)

cran-comments.mdCRAN-SUBMISSION

Lint, format, editor (1)

RStudio project

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v4 (2026-10-20)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

16 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing forestplot adds 3 packages (2 with compiled code, 297 KB of source tarballs). Heaviest: checkmate 247 KB, backports 29 KB, abind 21 KB.

Depends (4)

R >= 4.1.0gridcheckmate abind

Imports (0)

none

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (14)

dplyr Gmisc Greg knitr purrr rlang rmarkdown rmeta rms testthat tibble tidyr tidyselect tidyverse

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

16direct

3indirect

Depends 3 · Imports 13

Suggested by 1

Show all 17 packagesHide all 17 packages

Depends, Imports or LinkingTo, most downloaded first

Gmisc Greg bayesmeta baggr chest MetaStan door BayesCACE CPBayes multifear NMA IDMIR causalPAF rADA ofGEM impower133

Suggests, most downloaded first

pkr

How these are counted

Code & Tests

Datasets

People & History

People (2)

Max Gordon

Author, Maintainer since 1.0 (2014)

Thomas Lumley

Author, Contributor

Releases (22)

Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.

R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
3.2.0Latest
record
2026-03-04 · current release · diff ↗ ·
added 8 exports
fp_align_where, fp_extract_labels, fp_extract_labeltext, fp_set_favors, fp_set_summary, fp_span, fp_span_where, fp_txt_where
3.1.7
record
2025-06-12 · diff ↗
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
3.1.6
record
2024-11-19 · diff ↗
3.1.5
record
2024-10-11 · diff ↗
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24
3.1.3
record
2023-08-26 · diff ↗
R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
3.1.1
record
2022-12-06 · diff ↗
3.1.0
record
2022-10-10 · diff ↗ ·
added 1 export
fp_add_lines
3.0.0
record
2022-09-29 · diff ↗ ·
added 13 exports
fp_add_header, fp_align_center, fp_align_left, fp_align_right, fp_append_row, fp_decorate_graph, fp_insert_row, fp_set_style, fp_set_zebra_style, fp_txt_bold, fp_txt_gp, fp_txt_italic, fp_txt_plain
R
R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
2.0.1
record
2021-09-03 · diff ↗
2.0.0
record
2021-08-10 · diff ↗
R
R 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18

Show 19 earlier eventsHide 19 earlier events

1.10.1
record
2020-12-12 · diff ↗
1.10
record
2020-07-16 · diff ↗ ·
added 2 exports
fpShapesGp, prGetShapeGp
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24
1.9
record
2019-06-24 · diff ↗
1.8
record
2019-06-01 · diff ↗
R
R 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26
R
R 3.5.0 released · 2018-04-23
1.7.2
record
2017-09-16 · diff ↗
R
R 3.4.0 released · 2017-04-21
1.7
record
2017-01-07 · diff ↗
1.6
record
2016-11-14 · diff ↗ ·
added 1 export
fpDrawBarCI
1.5.1
record
2016-06-23 · diff ↗
R
R 3.3.0 released · 2016-05-03
1.4
record
2016-01-31 · diff ↗
1.3
record
2015-11-16 · diff ↗
R
R 3.2.0 released · 2015-04-16
1.1
record
2015-03-10 · diff ↗
1.0
record
2014-12-30
R
R 3.1.0 released · 2014-04-10

Package metadata

First published: 2014-12-30
Total releases: 22 / 12 yrs
License: GPL-2 OSI
Minimum R: ≥ 4.1.0
Bundled data: 3.1 KB / 3 files
Download size: 1.9 MB

Appears in task views

Meta-Analysis

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("forestplot")

Format

Gordon, M., & Lumley, T. (2026). forestplot: Advanced Forest Plot Using 'grid' Graphics (Version 3.2.0) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.forestplot

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 forestplot version 3.2.0 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-10-23. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-10-23, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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