R Observatory: Metrics for whitebox version 2.4.3

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

whitebox

2.4.3Package record

'WhiteboxTools' R Frontend

0packages dependsuggested by 6

21.8Kdownloads / year

5.7%test coverage

13/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by Andrew BrownCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗Website ↗Issues ↗

An R frontend for the 'WhiteboxTools' library, which is an advanced geospatial data analysis platform developed by Prof. John Lindsay at the University of Guelph's Geomorphometry and Hydrogeomatics Research Group. 'WhiteboxTools' can be used to perform common geographical information systems (GIS) analysis operations, such as cost-distance analysis, distance buffering, and raster reclassification. Remote sensing and image processing tasks include image enhancement (e.g. panchromatic sharpening, contrast adjustments), image mosaicing, numerous filtering operations, simple classification (k-means), and common image transformations. 'WhiteboxTools' also contains advanced tooling for spatial hydrological analysis (e.g. flow-accumulation, watershed delineation, stream network analysis, sink removal), terrain analysis (e.g. common terrain indices such as slope, curvatures, wetness index, hillshading; hypsometric analysis; multi-scale topographic position analysis), and LiDAR data processing. Suggested citation: Lindsay (2016) doi:10.1016/j.cageo.2016.07.003.

Changes in 2.4.3

Fix for CRAN check (#135)
GeoTIFF DEM sample data (_extdata/DEM.tif_) previously excluded, along with all other TIFF files, by _.Rbuildignore_ is now explicitly included
Fix for behavior of sample_dem_data() destfile argument:
Errors thrown from invalid sources from new wbt_source() (introduced in v2.4.2) revealed an underlying issue with sample data assets. Invalid source errors are now intentionally captured and tested, and inclusion of the extdata file should ensure other parts of tests work as expected
When destfile unset and no local file present, sample_dem_data() no longer attempts to download and write to the user package library (**which is read-only on CRAN**)
destfile now intended for copying the sample dataset from package _extdata_ folder, for workflows that need the sample data outside of the package library
sample_soils_data() now supports destfile (just like sample_dem_data())

From NEWS.md in the release

Install

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

install.packages("whitebox", 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("opengeos/whiteboxR")

Development version from opengeos/whiteboxR. 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-whitebox

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-whitebox

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-whitebox

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: 5.9 min · r-oldrel-windows-x86_64

Status changes

OK13 OK2026-08-04
NOTE12 OK, 1 NOTE2026-08-01
OK12 OK, 1 FAILURE2026-06-08
ERROR12 OK, 1 ERROR2026-06-07
OK14 OK2026-03-10

Advisories

none known

How this is measured·How advisories are found

Documentation

In release 2.4.3

READMEYes · 2,783 wordsVignettesYes · 3 · evaluation depends on the environmentNEWSYes · 100% structured · mentions 2.4.3Citation fileYes · cites a publicationWebsiteYes · pkgdown

Help pages: 568 (1 internal)includes a package overview page
Examples that run: 14%2 run in a plain check · 12 never run
Exported functions with examples: 2%
Documented parameters: 100%
Return-value docs: 100%
Help pages citing references: 0%

Vignettes (3)

How these are measured

Downloads

21.8K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #2,881 · ~60/day · ~1.8K/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

1.9K30 days

4.9K90 days

21.8K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on349 r2u5 autocran113 c2d4u

How downloads are counted

Repository

opengeos/whiteboxr ↗Organization: opengeos

189Stars

34Forks

6Open issues

1Open PRs

23Releases

417Commits

7Commit identities

geospatialgisremote-sensinggeoprocessinghydrologygeomorphometryrrstudio

417 commits · Last activity 2025-10-19 · +0.5% stars, 30d · Discussions: 5 posts

Responsiveness

How these are sampled

PRs merged (all time): 95%
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed issues: 3
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed PRs: 0

Stars over time

2025-10-19 · 1762026-10-13 · 189

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

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

Checks run against github.com/opengeos/whiteboxr on 2026-10-18.

Continuous integration (3)

GitHub ActionsR CMD check workflowAppVeyor

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

Governance and community (1)

The repository owner accepts GitHub Sponsors

Docs source (4)

README.Rmdpkgdown

GitHub Pages site last deployed 2025-10-21 · The repository has a site deploy workflow

Coverage (1)

Coverage reporting (Codecov)

Show all practicesHide 3 practices

Reproducibility and dev environment (2)

data-raw/Dockerfile

CRAN release process (1)

cran-comments.md

Automation and maintenance (1)

pre-commit

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v3 (2026-09-26)

AI coding toolsBeta

This repository shows signs of AI coding tools.

GitHub Copilotfirst seen 2025-10-18
Pull request: opened by its own account

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

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

6 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

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

Depends (1)

R >= 3.5

Imports (0)

none

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (6)

knitr rmarkdown testthat terra sf raster

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

0direct

0indirect

Suggested by 6

Suggests, most downloaded first

CSHShydRology ursa transfR SAiVE RPhosFate floodflow

How these are counted

Code & Tests

Datasets

People & History

People (2)

Andrew Brown

Author, Maintainer since 2.0.0 (2021) · added in 2.0.0

Qiusheng Wu

Author

Previously maintained by Qiusheng Wu (0.1.0).

Releases (14)

Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.

R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
2.4.3Latest
record
2025-10-20 · current release · diff ↗
2.4.2
record
2025-10-14 · diff ↗ ·
added 1 export
sample_soils_data
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
2.4.0
record
2024-05-27 · diff ↗
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24
2.3.4
record
2023-11-18 · diff ↗ ·
added 1 export
wbt_file_path
2.3.1
record
2023-06-07 · diff ↗ ·
added 2 exports
wbt_launch_runner, wbt_runner_path
R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
2.3.0
record
2023-03-29 · diff ↗ ·
added 15 exports
wbt, wbt_data_dir, wbt_dem_void_filling, wbt_individual_tree_detection, wbt_install_wb_extension, wbt_launch_wb_runner, wbt_list_unique_values_raster, wbt_multiscale_curvatures, wbt_normalize_lidar, wbt_remove_raster_polygon_holes, wbt_result, wbt_river_centerlines, wbt_source, wbt_topo_render, whitebox.env
2.2.0
record
2022-10-27 · diff ↗ ·
added 19 exports
wbt_breakline_mapping, wbt_classify_lidar, wbt_colourize_based_on_class, wbt_colourize_based_on_point_returns, wbt_conditioned_latin_hypercube, wbt_depth_to_water, wbt_filter_lidar, wbt_heat_map, wbt_high_pass_bilateral_filter, wbt_lidar_eigenvalue_features, wbt_max_upslope_value, wbt_modify_lidar, wbt_multiply_overlay, wbt_piecewise_contrast_stretch, wbt_recover_flightline_info, wbt_rust_backtrace, wbt_sort_lidar, wbt_split_lidar, wbt_travelling_salesman_problem
2.1.5
record
2022-07-11 · diff ↗ ·
added 2 exports
wbt_activate, wbt_install_extension
2.1.4
record
2022-05-15 · diff ↗
R
R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
2.1.2
record
2022-03-21 · diff ↗
2.1.1
record
2022-03-15 · diff ↗ ·
added 3 exports
sample_dem_data, wbt_compress_rasters, wbt_max_procs

Show 9 earlier eventsHide 9 earlier events

2.1.0
record
2022-02-11 · diff ↗ ·
removed 1 export
wbt_change_in_contributing_area

added 31 exports
wbt_accumulation_curvature, wbt_curvedness, wbt_dbscan, wbt_difference_curvature, wbt_gaussian_curvature, wbt_gaussian_scale_space, wbt_generalize_classified_raster, wbt_generalize_with_similarity, wbt_generating_function, wbt_geomorphons, wbt_horizontal_excess_curvature, wbt_knn_classification, wbt_knn_regression, wbt_lidar_shift, wbt_local_hypsometric_analysis, wbt_local_quadratic_regression, wbt_logistic_regression, wbt_max_upslope_elev_change, wbt_maximal_curvature, wbt_mean_curvature, wbt_minimal_curvature, wbt_random_forest_classification, wbt_random_forest_regression, wbt_ring_curvature, wbt_rotor, wbt_shape_index, wbt_slope_vs_aspect_plot, wbt_svm_classification, wbt_svm_regression, wbt_unsphericity and 1 more
unarchivedReturned to CRAN
2021-09-10
2.0.0
record
2021-09-10 · diff ↗ ·
removed 396 exports
absolute_value, adaptive_filter, add, add_point_coordinates_to_table, aggregate_raster, and, anova, arc_cos, arc_sin, arc_tan, aspect, atan2, attribute_correlation, attribute_histogram, attribute_scattergram, average_flowpath_slope, average_overlay, average_upslope_flowpath_length, balance_contrast_enhancement, basins, bilateral_filter, block_maximum_gridding, block_minimum_gridding, breach_depressions, breach_single_cell_pits, buffer_raster, ceil, centroid, centroid_vector, change_vector_analysis and 366 more

added 496 exports
check_whitebox_binary, install_whitebox, wbt_absolute_value, wbt_adaptive_filter, wbt_add, wbt_add_point_coordinates_to_table, wbt_aggregate_raster, wbt_and, wbt_anova, wbt_arc_cos, wbt_arc_sin, wbt_arc_tan, wbt_arcosh, wbt_arsinh, wbt_artanh, wbt_ascii_to_las, wbt_aspect, wbt_assess_route, wbt_atan2, wbt_attribute_correlation, wbt_attribute_correlation_neighbourhood_analysis, wbt_attribute_histogram, wbt_attribute_scattergram, wbt_average_flowpath_slope, wbt_average_normal_vector_angular_deviation, wbt_average_overlay, wbt_average_upslope_flowpath_length, wbt_balance_contrast_enhancement, wbt_basins, wbt_bilateral_filter and 466 more
R
R 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24
R
R 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26
archivedRemoved from CRAN
2019-02-08
policy violation
0.1.0
record
2019-02-07
R
R 3.5.0 released · 2018-04-23

Package metadata

First published: 2019-02-07
Total releases: 14 / 7 yrs
License: MIT + file LICENSE OSI
Minimum R: ≥ 3.5
Bundled data: 78 KB / 2 files
Download size: 1.0 MB

Appears in task views

Hydrological Data and Modeling Analysis of Spatial Data

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' entry:

citation("whitebox")

The package provides a citation file, so citation() returns the authors' own entry.

It points to 10.1016/j.cageo.2016.07.003.

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 whitebox version 2.4.3 [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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