R Observatory: Metrics for upstartr version 0.2.0

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

upstartr

0.2.0

Utilities Powering the Globe and Mail's Data Journalism Template

0packages depend

4.6Kdownloads / year

52.2%test coverage

13/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by Tom CardosoCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗Website ↗Issues ↗

Core functions necessary for using The Globe and Mail's R data journalism template, 'startr', along with utilities for day-to-day data journalism tasks, such as reading and writing files, producing graphics and cleaning up datasets.

Changes in 0.2.0

Fixes write_plot() so useDingbats = FALSE is actually applied for PDF output (closes #3). The previous code compared the literal string 'format' against 'pdf' instead of checking the format argument, so the fix never took effect. Adds test coverage for write_plot() and write_excel().
initialize_startr() now defaults options(repos) to Posit Package Manager's rolling binary snapshot instead of leaving it at CRAN's default. CRAN doesn't always have a binary available for every platform/R-version combination for heavy compiled packages (arrow, sf, etc.), which silently falls back to a source compile that can take many minutes, or fail outright on a machine without build tools. Set initialize_startr(repos = NULL) to leave your existing repos option untouched (e.g. if your organization already runs its own mirror), or pass a different URL to use a different one.
Moves sf, tgamtheme and beepr from Imports to Suggests (closes #8). These are heavy or interactive-only dependencies (sf needs system GDAL/GEOS/PROJ libraries; tgamtheme is only used if listed in initialize_startr(packages = ...); beepr plays audio, which is meaningless in CI or a headless/agent environment). Installing upstartr no longer requires any of them. Functions that need them (write_shp(), the tgamtheme branch of initialize_startr(), and beep notifications) now check for the package first and fail with a clear message (or, for beeps, just silently skip) instead of hard-requiring it at install time.

From NEWS.md in the release

Install

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

install.packages("upstartr", 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("globeandmail/upstartr")

Development version from globeandmail/upstartr. 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-upstartr

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-upstartr

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-upstartr

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: 12.7 min · r-oldrel-macos-x86_64

Status changes

OK13 OK2026-08-04
NOTE12 OK, 1 NOTE2026-08-01
OK13 OK2026-06-09
ERROR12 OK, 1 ERROR2026-06-08
OK14 OK2026-03-10

Advisories

none known

How this is measured·How advisories are found

Documentation

In release 0.2.0

READMEYes · 117 wordsVignettesNoNEWSYes · 100% structured · mentions 0.2.0Citation fileNoWebsiteYes · pkgdown

Help pages: 39 (3 internal)
Examples that run: 100%10 run in a plain check
Exported functions with examples: 26%
Documented parameters: 100%
Return-value docs: 100%
Help pages citing references: 0%

How these are measured

Downloads

4.6K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #5,077 · ~12/day · ~380/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

45230 days

1.6K90 days

4.6K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on84 r2u1 autocran

How downloads are counted

Repository

globeandmail/upstartr ↗Organization: globeandmail

6Stars

1Forks

1Open issues

1Open PRs

3Releases

65Commits

2Commit identities

data-journalismjournalismnewsdatar-packagerdata-visualizationdata-analysis

65 commits · Last activity 2026-09-28

Responsiveness

How these are sampled

PRs merged (all time): 83%
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed issues: 1,544
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed PRs: 0

Stars over time

2024-05-08 · 62026-07-07 · 6

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

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

Checks run against github.com/globeandmail/upstartr 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

Docs source (2)

pkgdown

GitHub Pages site last deployed 2026-09-28

CRAN release process (2)

cran-comments.mdCRAN-SUBMISSION

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 on or before 2026-07-26
Seen in the repository: CLAUDE.md
Named in .Rbuildignore: CLAUDE.md
Commits: at least 7 crediting it in the message

From outside contributors

Claude Code
Pull requests: 6 from outside contributors, first on 2026-07-26

Models named in its commits

Claude Sonnet 57 commits · Jul 2026

Counts are commits, not lines of code. Commits by a tool's accounts count once across all of its accounts. Commits crediting it are the largest count among its credit lines, a minimum.How this is detected·Detection ruleset v4 (updated 2026-09-27)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

22 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing upstartr adds 87 packages (42 with compiled code, 72 MB of source tarballs). Heaviest: stringi 11 MB, ggplot2 6.0 MB, data.table 5.7 MB.

Depends (1)

R >= 3.6.3

Imports (17)

here stringr readxl magrittr readr purrr ggplot2 glue dplyr librarian openxlsx knitr tidytext scales rmarkdown textclean crayon

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (5)

testthat withr beepr sf tgamtheme

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

0direct

0indirect

Nothing depends on this yet.

How these are counted

Code & Tests

People & History

People (3)

Tom Cardoso

Author, Maintainer since 0.1.0 (2021)

creator and maintainer

Michael Pereira

Contributor

The Globe and Mail Inc.

Copyright holder

Releases (4)

Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.

0.2.0Latest
record
2026-07-27 · current release · diff ↗
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
0.1.2
record
2024-01-09 · diff ↗
R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
R
R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
R
R 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18
0.1.1
record
2021-02-23 · diff ↗
0.1.0
record
2021-02-15
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24

Package metadata

First published: 2021-02-15
Total releases: 4 / 5 yrs
License: MIT + file LICENSE OSI
Minimum R: ≥ 3.6.3
Download size: 78 KB

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("upstartr")

Format

Cardoso, T., The Globe and Mail Inc., & Pereira, M. (2026). upstartr: Utilities Powering the Globe and Mail's Data Journalism Template (Version 0.2.0) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.upstartr

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 upstartr version 0.2.0 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-10-17. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-10-17, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

Report a problem with this page →