R Observatory: Metrics for frontmatter version 0.3.0

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

frontmatter

0.3.0Package record

Parse Front Matter from Documents

1packages depend

9.5Kdownloads / year

71.2%test coverage

13/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by Garrick Aden-BuieCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗Website ↗Issues ↗Declared funder: Posit Software, PBC

Extracts and parses structured metadata ('YAML' or 'TOML') from the beginning of text documents. Front matter is a common pattern in 'Quarto' documents, 'R Markdown' documents, static site generators, documentation systems, content management tools and even 'Python' and 'R' scripts where metadata is placed at the top of a document, separated from the main content by delimiter fences.

Changes in 0.3.0

format_front_matter() and write_front_matter() now infer the delimiter automatically when delimiter = NULL (the new default). If x was returned by parse_front_matter() or read_front_matter(), the original fence style is preserved; otherwise write_front_matter() falls back to the file extension of path, and finally to "yaml" (#8).
Added support for shebang lines (#!) at the start of files. When a file begins with a shebang, the parser now recognizes front matter in comment-wrapped formats (# ---, #' ---) and PEP 723 (# /// script) immediately following the shebang (with zero or one blank lines in between). The shebang line is included in the returned body. format_front_matter() and write_front_matter() also move a leading shebang line above the front matter block when writing (#5).

Show all changes in 0.3.0Hide the rest of the changes in 0.3.0

Added SQL front matter support with two comment styles: line comments (-- ---/-- +++) and block comments in compact (/* --- ... --- */) and expanded (/* + --- ... --- + */) forms. Six new delimiter shortcuts are available for write_front_matter(): yaml_sql_line, toml_sql_line, yaml_sql_block_compact, toml_sql_block_compact, yaml_sql_block_expanded, and toml_sql_block_expanded (#4).

From NEWS.md in the release

Install

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

install.packages("frontmatter", 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("posit-dev/frontmatter")

Development version from posit-dev/frontmatter. 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-frontmatter

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-frontmatter

RPMs from the iucar/cran COPR, rebuilt from CRAN.

For install.packages() integration in R, also: sudo dnf install R-CoprManager

Health

CRAN checks

13OK

CRAN check page ↗

Slowest check: 2.3 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 0.3.0

READMEYes · 599 wordsVignettesNoNEWSYes · 100% structured · mentions 0.3.0Citation fileNoWebsiteYes · pkgdown

Help pages: 3 (1 internal)includes a package overview page
Examples that run: 100%2 run in a plain check
Exported functions with examples: 100%
Documented parameters: 58%
Return-value docs: 100%
Help pages citing references: 0%

How these are measured

Downloads

9.5K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #3,280 · ~26/day · ~795/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

1.4K30 days

3.5K90 days

9.5K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on570 r2u

How downloads are counted

Repository

posit-dev/frontmatter ↗Organization: posit-dev

4Stars

1Forks

0Open issues

0Open PRs

3Releases

57Commits

1Commit identities

57 commits · Last activity 2026-07-05 · 0% stars, 30d

Responsiveness

How these are sampled

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

Stars over time

2026-01-09 · 22026-07-07 · 4

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

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

Checks run against github.com/posit-dev/frontmatter 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 (4)

README.Rmdpkgdown

GitHub Pages site last deployed 2026-07-05 · The repository has a site deploy workflow

pkgdown site last built 2026-07-05

Coverage (1)

.covrignore

CRAN release process (1)

cran-comments.md

Show all practicesHide 1 practice

Lint, format, editor (1)

RStudio 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 2026-01-09
Seen in the repository: .claude, CLAUDE.md
Named in .Rbuildignore: .claude, CLAUDE.md

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v4 (updated 2026-09-27)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

8 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing frontmatter adds 4 packages (3 with compiled code, 3.6 MB of source tarballs). Heaviest: yaml12 1.6 MB, tomledit 1.0 MB, rlang 766 KB.

Depends (0)

none

Imports (4)

cpp11 rlang tomledit yaml12

LinkingTo (1)

cpp11

Suggests (3)

testthat withr yaml

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

1direct

0indirect

Imports 1

Depends, Imports or LinkingTo, most downloaded first

btw

How these are counted

Code & Tests

People & History

People (2)

Garrick Aden-Buie

Author, Maintainer since 0.1.0 (2026)

Posit Software, PBC

Copyright holder, Funder

Releases (3)

Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.

0.3.0Latest
record
2026-07-03 · current release · diff ↗
R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
0.2.0
record
2026-02-09 · diff ↗ ·
added 2 exports
format_front_matter, write_front_matter
0.1.0
record
2026-01-14
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11

Package metadata

First published: 2026-01-14
Total releases: 3 / 1 yrs
License: MIT + file LICENSE OSI
Download size: 145 KB

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("frontmatter")

Format

Aden-Buie, G., & Posit Software, PBC. (2026). frontmatter: Parse Front Matter from Documents (Version 0.3.0) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.frontmatter

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 frontmatter version 0.3.0 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-10-21. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-10-21, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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