R Observatory: Metrics for piggyback version 0.1.5

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

piggyback

0.1.5Package record

Managing Larger Data on a GitHub Repository

10packages dependsuggested by 8

616.8Kdownloads / year

36.4%test coverage

13/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by Carl BoettigerCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗Issues ↗

Because larger (> 50 MB) data files cannot easily be committed to git, a different approach is required to manage data associated with an analysis in a GitHub repository. This package provides a simple work-around by allowing larger (up to 2 GB) data files to piggyback on a repository as assets attached to individual GitHub releases. These files are not handled by git in any way, but instead are uploaded, downloaded, or edited directly by calls through the GitHub API. These data files can be versioned manually by creating different releases. This approach works equally well with public or private repositories. Data can be uploaded and downloaded programmatically from scripts. No authentication is required to download data from public repositories.

Changes in 0.1.5

Fix bug in pb_upload() to correctly resolve "latest" tag - if there is no release

tag actually named "latest" it will use the first release from pb_releases(). [#75]

Make pb_download() and pb_info() also resolve "latest" similarly: if there

is no release tag named "latest", use first release from pb_releases()

Updated test coverage to use GHA
Fixed error handling for pb_list() for no release.
pb_list() now respects the option "piggyback.verbose"
Fix download token handling [#88]
pb_upload() no longer prints out extra newlines [#93]
pb_new_release() now warns and exits early instead of failing if a release

already exists. [#95]

Fixup test issues [#100]

Show all changes in 0.1.5Hide the rest of the changes in 0.1.5

pb_upload adds a two-second sleep after user creates release [#101]
This is because it takes a few seconds for the GitHub API to register that

the new release has been created

Adds piggyback.cache R option to avoid memoising altogether
Adds .pb_cache_clear() function to empty the cache more consistently

(internally and externally)

From NEWS.md in the release

Install

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

install.packages("piggyback", 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("ropensci/piggyback")

Development version from ropensci/piggyback. 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-piggyback

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-piggyback

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-piggyback

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: 1.2 min · r-devel-windows-x86_64

Status changes

OK13 OK2026-08-05
NOTE12 OK, 1 NOTE2026-08-01
OK13 OK2026-06-08
ERROR12 OK, 1 ERROR2026-06-07
OK14 OK2026-03-10

Advisories

none known

How this is measured·How advisories are found

Documentation

In release 0.1.5

READMEYes · 538 wordsVignettesYes · 2 · evaluation depends on the environmentNEWSYes · 100% structured · mentions 0.1.5Citation fileNo

Help pages: 10 (1 internal)includes a package overview page
Examples that run: 11%1 run in a plain check · 1 only when donttest examples are enabled (R CMD check --as-cran) · 7 never run
Exported functions with examples: 100%
Documented parameters: 94%
Return-value docs: 56%
Help pages citing references: 0%

Vignettes (2)

alternatives HTML
piggyback HTML

How these are measured

Downloads

616.8K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #2,667 · ~1.7K/day · ~51.4K/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

2.6K30 days

5.8K90 days

616.8K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on406 r2u5 autocran787 conda_forge39 c2d4u

How downloads are counted

Repository

ropensci/piggyback ↗Organization: ropensci

205Stars

29Forks

4Open issues

0Open PRs

16Releases

356Commits

19Commit identities

git-lfsdata-storerpeer-reviewedr-packagerstats

License file reads as GPL-3.0 · 356 commits · Last activity 2025-11-10 · +0.5% stars, 30d · Default branch at 0.1.5.9007, ahead of CRAN 0.1.5 (checked 2026-10-22)

Responsiveness

How these are sampled

PRs merged (all time): 93%
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed issues: 6
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed PRs: 0

Stars over time

2025-10-22 · 1962026-10-21 · 205

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

11 development-tooling and community-health practices detected across 7 families in the upstream repository

Checks run against github.com/ropensci/piggyback on 2026-10-22.

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 (3)

README.Rmdpkgdown

GitHub Pages site last deployed 2019-07-17

Coverage (1)

Coverage reporting (Codecov)

Show all practicesHide 3 practices

CRAN release process (1)

cran-comments.md

Research and citation (2)

codemeta.jsonJOSS paper

Lint, format, editor (1)

RStudio project

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

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

17 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing piggyback adds 27 packages (16 with compiled code, 8.7 MB of source tarballs). Heaviest: fs 1.4 MB, openssl 1.1 MB, jsonlite 1.0 MB.

Depends (0)

none

Imports (8)

cli glue gh httr jsonlite fs lubridate memoise

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (9)

spelling readr covr testthat knitr rmarkdown gert withr magrittr

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

10direct

0indirect

Imports 10

Suggested by 8

Show all 18 packagesHide all 18 packages

Depends, Imports or LinkingTo, most downloaded first

wru cnefetools brickset clinTrialData metaboData sprtt ready4 odbr gwid pkgmatch

Suggests, most downloaded first

umx nflreadr wehoop pkgstats healthbR prepR4pcm megatrees rtrees

How these are counted

Code & Tests

People & History

People (5)

Carl Boettiger

Tan Ho

Author · added in 0.1.2

Jeffrey O Hanson

Contributor

Kevin Kuo

Contributor · added in 0.0.11

Mark Padgham

Contributor

Listed in earlier versions (1)

Jeffrey O

no longer listed · 0.0.9 to 0.1.5

Releases (11)

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
0.1.5Latest
record
2023-07-11 · current release · diff ↗ ·
added 1 export
.pb_cache_clear
R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
0.1.4
record
2022-07-20 · diff ↗ ·
added 2 exports
pb_release_create, pb_release_delete
0.1.3
record
2022-05-19 · diff ↗
0.1.2
record
2022-04-27 · diff ↗ ·
added 1 export
pb_releases
R
R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
0.1.1
record
2021-09-09 · diff ↗
0.1.0
record
2021-08-06 · diff ↗ ·
removed 1 export
pb_track
R
R 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24
0.0.11
record
2020-02-25 · diff ↗
R
R 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26
0.0.10
record
2019-02-07 · diff ↗

Show 4 earlier eventsHide 4 earlier events

0.0.9
record
2019-01-09 · diff ↗
0.0.8
record
2018-10-06 · diff ↗
0.0.7
record
2018-09-30
R
R 3.5.0 released · 2018-04-23

Package metadata

First published: 2018-09-30
Total releases: 11 / 8 yrs
License: GPL-3 OSI
Download size: 519 KB

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("piggyback")

Format

Boettiger, C., Hanson, J. O., Ho, T., Kuo, K., & Padgham, M. (2023). piggyback: Managing Larger Data on a GitHub Repository (Version 0.1.5) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.piggyback

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 piggyback version 0.1.5 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-10-25. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-10-25, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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