R Observatory: Metrics for suggests version 0.1.0

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

suggests

0.1.0Package record

Declare when Suggested Packages are Needed

0packages depend

6.5Kdownloads / year

91.4%test coverage

0/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by Owen JonesCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗Issues ↗

By adding dependencies to the "Suggests" field of a package's DESCRIPTION file, and then declaring that they are needed within any dependent functionality, it is often possible to significantly reduce the number of "hard" dependencies required by a package. This package provides a minimal way to declare when a suggested package is needed.

Changes in 0.1.0

First official CRAN release!

need() (and is_installed()) can check for a minimum version of a package by appending >=[version], e.g. need("pkg>=0.1.2")
need() also gains a couple of new arguments:
Use msg to provide a custom informative message, to be displayed to users if one or more packages will need to be installed
Use install_cmd to provide a custom installation command, which will be used in the installation prompt

From NEWS.md in the release

Install

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

install.packages("suggests", 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("owenjonesuob/suggests")

Development version from owenjonesuob/suggests. 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-suggests

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-suggests

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-suggests

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

13NOTE

Check messages

NOTERd filesr-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, r-oldrel-macos-arm64, r-oldrel-macos-x86_64, r-oldrel-windows-x86_64, r-patched-linux-x86_64, r-release-linux-x86_64, r-release-macos-arm64, r-release-macos-x86_64, r-release-windows-x86_64

checkRd: (-1) suggests.Rd:14: Lost braces; missing escapes or markup?
    14 | {suggests} aims to make that workflow as minimal and painless as possible,
       | ^

CRAN check page ↗

Slowest check: 1.6 min · r-devel-windows-x86_64

Status changes

NOTE13 NOTENow
NOTE14 NOTE2026-03-10

Advisories

none known

How this is measured·How advisories are found

Documentation

In release 0.1.0

READMEYes · 260 wordsVignettesNoNEWSYes · 100% structured · mentions 0.1.0Citation fileNoWebsitenot declared in DESCRIPTION

Help pages: 4 (1 internal)includes a package overview page
Examples that run: 67%2 run in a plain check · 1 never run
Exported functions with examples: 100%
Documented parameters: 100%
Return-value docs: 100%
Help pages citing references: 0%

How these are measured

Downloads

6.5K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #10,247 · ~18/day · ~545/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

35530 days

1K90 days

6.5K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on66 r2u3 autocran187 conda_forge

How downloads are counted

Repository

owenjonesuob/suggests ↗Account: owenjonesuob

10Stars

0Forks

0Open issues

0Open PRs

2Releases

25Commits

1Commit identities

25 commits · Last activity 2023-08-09

Responsiveness

How these are sampled

PRs merged (all time): not measured
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed issues: 2
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed PRs: not measured

Stars over time

2024-06-04 · 102026-07-07 · 10

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

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

Checks run against github.com/owenjonesuob/suggests on 2026-10-25.

Continuous integration (2)

GitHub ActionsR CMD check workflow

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

Coverage (1)

Coverage reporting (Codecov)

CRAN release process (1)

cran-comments.md

Lint, format, editor (1)

RStudio project

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

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

2 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing suggests adds no packages beyond those that come with R.

Depends (0)

none

Imports (1)

utils

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (2)

covr testthat

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

0direct

0indirect

Nothing depends on this yet.

How these are counted

Code & Tests

People & History

People (1)

Owen Jones

Author, Maintainer since 0.1.0 (2023)

Releases (1)

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
0.1.0Latest
record
2023-08-08 · current release
R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21

Package metadata

First published: 2023-08-08
Total releases: 1 / 3 yrs
License: MIT + file LICENSE OSI
Download size: 9.3 KB

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("suggests")

Format

Jones, O. (2023). suggests: Declare when Suggested Packages are Needed (Version 0.1.0) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.suggests

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 suggests version 0.1.0 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-10-26. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-10-26, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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