R Observatory: Metrics for pikchr version 1.1.1

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

pikchr

1.1.1Package record

R Wrapper for 'pikchr' (PIC) Diagram Language

0packages depend

6.1Kdownloads / year

–test coverage

13/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by Andre LeiteCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗Website ↗Issues ↗

An 'R' interface to 'pikchr' (https://pikchr.org, pronounced "picture"), a 'PIC'-like markup language for creating diagrams within technical documentation. Originally developed by Brian Kernighan, 'PIC' has been adapted into 'pikchr' by D. Richard Hipp, the creator of 'SQLite'. 'pikchr' is designed to be embedded in fenced code blocks of Markdown or other documentation markup languages, making it ideal for generating diagrams in text-based formats. This package allows R users to seamlessly integrate the descriptive syntax of 'pikchr' for diagram creation directly within the 'R' environment.

Changes in 1.1.1

Bug fixes

Fixed a memory leak in the C interface (pikchr_c): the SVG buffer returned by pikchr() was never freed, leaking on every diagram render.
Guarded the C interface against a possible NULL return from pikchr() that could crash the R session.
Fixed the height argument default in pikchr(), which never fell back to the SVG viewBox height and produced an empty height: CSS rule.
Aligned the documented argument defaults of pikchr() (width, height, fontSize, fontFamily, align) with the actual function defaults.

Other

Regenerated the package logo with a geometrically regular hexagon (the previous SVG was horizontally squished) and fixed an invalid <def> element (now <defs>) in the logo source.

From NEWS.md in the release

Install

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

install.packages("pikchr", 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("StrategicProjects/pikchr")

Development version from StrategicProjects/pikchr. 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-pikchr

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-pikchr

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-pikchr

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: 2.6 min · r-devel-windows-x86_64

Status changes

OK13 OK2026-08-05
NOTE12 OK, 1 NOTE2026-08-01
OK13 OK2026-06-09
ERROR12 OK, 1 ERROR2026-06-08
OK13 OK2026-05-10

Show 2 earlier changesHide 2 earlier changes

WARNING12 OK, 1 WARNING2026-05-09
OK14 OK2026-03-10

Advisories

none known

How this is measured·How advisories are found

Documentation

In release 1.1.1

READMEYes · 741 wordsVignettesYes · 2 · dynamicNEWSYes · 100% structured · mentions 1.1.1Citation fileNoWebsiteYes · pkgdown

Help pages: 9 (7 internal)
Examples that run: 100%1 run in a plain check (under a condition)
Exported functions with examples: 100%
Documented parameters: 89%
Return-value docs: 100%
Help pages citing references: 0%

Vignettes (2)

Examples HTML
Pikchr User Manual HTML

How these are measured

Downloads

6.1K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #15,357 · ~17/day · ~505/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

27330 days

80190 days

6.1K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on378 r2u5 autocran

How downloads are counted

Repository

strategicprojects/pikchr ↗Organization: StrategicProjects

1Stars

0Forks

0Open issues

0Open PRs

0Releases

59Commits

1Commit identities

59 commits · Last activity 2026-09-29

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

2024-10-01 · 12026-07-07 · 1

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

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

Checks run against github.com/strategicprojects/pikchr on 2026-10-21.

Continuous integration (1)

GitHub Actions

Docs source (4)

README.Rmdpkgdown

GitHub Pages site last deployed 2026-09-29 · The repository has a site deploy workflow

pkgdown site last built 2026-09-29

CRAN release process (2)

cran-comments.mdCRAN-SUBMISSION

Lint, format, editor (1)

RStudio project

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

AI coding toolsBeta

This repository shows signs of AI coding tools.

Claude Codefirst seen on or before 2026-06-14
Named in .Rbuildignore: .claude, CLAUDE.md
Named in .gitignore: .claude, CLAUDE.md
Commits: at least 13 crediting it in the message

From outside contributors

Claude Code
Pull requests: 6 from outside contributors, first on 2026-06-14

Models named in its commits

Claude Opus 4.810 commits · Jun 2026
Claude Opus 5.53 commits · Sep 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

8 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing pikchr adds 19 packages (14 with compiled code, 16 MB of source tarballs). Heaviest: stringi 11 MB, vctrs 1.0 MB, rlang 766 KB.

Depends (1)

R >= 4.0

Imports (6)

cli knitr brio htmltools stringr rsvg

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (2)

kableExtra rmarkdown

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

0direct

0indirect

Nothing depends on this yet.

How these are counted

Code & Tests

Datasets

People & History

People (7)

Andre Leite

Author, Maintainer since 0.97 (2024)

Carlos Amorin

Author · added in 1.1.0

Diogo Bezerra

Author · added in 1.1.0

Hugo Vaconcelos

Author

Marcos Wasilew

Author · added in 1.1.0

Richard Hipp

Contributor

Brian Kernighan

Contributor

Releases (6)

Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.

1.1.1Latest
record
2026-06-14 · current release · diff ↗
R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
1.1.0
record
2026-04-07 · diff ↗
1.0.3
record
2025-09-19 · diff ↗
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
1.0.1
record
2025-03-31 · diff ↗
1.0
record
2024-12-02 · diff ↗
0.97
record
2024-09-30
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24

Package metadata

First published: 2024-09-30
Total releases: 6 / 2 yrs
License: GPL (>= 2) OSI
Minimum R: ≥ 4.0
Bundled data: 12 KB / 1 file
Download size: 1.4 MB

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("pikchr")

Format

Leite, A., Amorin, C., Bezerra, D., Hipp, R., Kernighan, B., Vaconcelos, H., & Wasilew, M. (2026). pikchr: R Wrapper for 'pikchr' (PIC) Diagram Language (Version 1.1.1) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.pikchr

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 pikchr version 1.1.1 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-10-24. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-10-24, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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