R Observatory: Metrics for later version 1.4.8

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

later

1.4.8Package record

Utilities for Scheduling Functions to Execute Later with Event Loops

33packages dependsuggested by 36

8.3Mdownloads / year

82.7%test coverage

13/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by Charlie GaoCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗Website ↗Issues ↗Declared funder: Posit Software, PBC

Executes arbitrary R or C functions some time after the current time, after the R execution stack has emptied. The functions are scheduled in an event loop.

Changes in 1.4.8

Fixed #262: Internal update for compatibility with Rcpp re. Rf_error handling (#263).

From NEWS.md in the release

Install

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

install.packages("later", 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("r-lib/later")

Development version from r-lib/later. 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-later

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-later

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-later

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: 4.6 min · r-devel-windows-x86_64

Status changes

OK13 OK2026-08-05
NOTE12 OK, 1 NOTE2026-08-01
OK14 OK2026-04-22
ERROR13 OK, 1 ERROR2026-04-18
OK14 OK2026-03-10

Advisories

none known

How this is measured·How advisories are found

Documentation

In release 1.4.8

READMEYes · 713 wordsVignettesYes · 1 · staticNEWSYes · 100% structured · mentions 1.4.8Citation fileNoWebsiteYes · pkgdown

Help pages: 9 (4 internal)includes a package overview page
Examples that run: 100%2 run in a plain check (1 of them under a condition)
Exported functions with examples: 33%
Documented parameters: 100%
Return-value docs: 50%
Help pages citing references: 0%

Vignettes (1)

Using later from C++ HTML

How these are measured

Downloads

8.3M

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #99 · ~22.8K/day · ~694.8K/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

570.7K30 days

1.8M90 days

8.3M1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on232.1K r2u190 autocran626.8K conda_forge3.6K c2d4u

How downloads are counted

Repository

r-lib/later ↗Organization: r-lib

151Stars

31Forks

10Open issues

3Open PRs

22Releases

398Commits

11Commit identities

revent-loop

398 commits · Last activity 2026-08-07 · +0.7% stars, 30d · Default branch at 1.4.8.9000, ahead of CRAN 1.4.8 (checked 2026-10-22)

Responsiveness

How these are sampled

PRs merged (all time): 86%
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed issues: 788
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed PRs: 1

Stars over time

2025-08-12 · 1462026-09-25 · 151

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

11 development-tooling and community-health practices detected across 6 families in the upstream repository

Checks run against github.com/r-lib/later on 2026-10-22.

Continuous integration (1)

GitHub Actions

Governance and community (1)

Code of conduct

Docs source (4)

README.Rmdpkgdown

GitHub Pages site last deployed 2026-08-07 · The repository has a site deploy workflow

pkgdown site last built 2026-03-05

Coverage (1)

Coverage reporting (Codecov)

Show all practicesHide 2 practices

CRAN release process (1)

cran-comments.md

Lint, format, editor (3)

AirVS CodeRStudio 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 2025-11-12
Named in .Rbuildignore: .claude, CLAUDE.md
Named in .gitignore: .claude, CLAUDE.md
Pull request it wrote: opened by a project member
Commits: at least 1 crediting it in the message

Shared conventions any agent may read, so they name no particular tool.

Seen in the repository: AGENTS.md

Models named in its commits

Claude Opus 4.61 commit · Feb 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 later adds 2 packages (2 with compiled code, 2.5 MB of source tarballs). Heaviest: Rcpp 1.8 MB, rlang 766 KB.

Depends (1)

R >= 3.5

Imports (2)

Rcpp rlang

LinkingTo (1)

Rcpp

Suggests (5)

knitr nanonext promises rmarkdown testthat

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

33direct

2,098indirect

Imports 33 · LinkingTo 3

Suggested by 36

Show the 48 most downloaded packagesHide the 48 most downloaded packages

Depends, Imports or LinkingTo, most downloaded first

Suggests, most downloaded first

curl httr2 servr plumber nanonext mapview coro learnr shinychat routr tidyllm dipsaus firesale plumber2 shinyOAuth

and 21 more packages that suggest it on CRAN ↗

How these are counted

Code & Tests

People & History

People (6)

Charlie Gao

Author, Maintainer since 1.4.3 (2025) · added in 1.4.0

Winston Chang

Author · added in 0.8.0

Joe Cheng

Author

Marcus Geelnard

Contributor, Copyright holder

TinyCThread library, https://tinycthread.github.io/

Evan Nemerson

Contributor, Copyright holder · added in 0.6

TinyCThread library, https://tinycthread.github.io/

Posit Software, PBC

Copyright holder, Funder · added in 1.4.3

Previously maintained by Winston Chang (1.2.0 to 1.4.2) and Joe Cheng (0.3 to 1.1.0.1).

Listed in earlier versions (1)

RStudio

no longer listed · 0.3 to 1.3.1

Releases (25)

Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.

R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
1.4.8Latest
record
2026-03-05 · current release · diff ↗
1.4.7
record
2026-02-24 · diff ↗
1.4.6
record
2026-02-13 · diff ↗
1.4.5
record
2026-01-08 · diff ↗
1.4.4
record
2025-08-27 · diff ↗
1.4.3
record
2025-08-20 · diff ↗
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
1.4.2
record
2025-04-08 · diff ↗
1.4.1
record
2024-11-28 · diff ↗
1.4.0
record
2024-11-26 · diff ↗ ·
added 1 export
later_fd
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24
1.3.2
record
2023-12-06 · diff ↗
1.3.1
record
2023-05-02 · diff ↗
R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
R
R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22

Show 19 earlier eventsHide 19 earlier events

1.3.0
record
2021-08-18 · diff ↗
R
R 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18
1.2.0
record
2021-04-23 · diff ↗
1.1.0.1
record
2020-06-05 · diff ↗
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24
1.0.0
record
2019-10-04 · diff ↗ ·
added 7 exports
create_loop, current_loop, destroy_loop, exists_loop, global_loop, with_loop, with_temp_loop
R
R 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26
0.8.0
record
2019-02-11 · diff ↗
0.7.5
record
2018-09-19 · diff ↗
0.7.4
record
2018-08-31 · diff ↗
0.7.3
record
2018-06-08 · diff ↗
0.7.2
record
2018-05-02 · diff ↗
R
R 3.5.0 released · 2018-04-23
0.7.1
record
2018-03-07 · diff ↗
0.6
record
2017-11-04 · diff ↗
0.5
record
2017-10-05 · diff ↗ ·
added 1 export
next_op_secs
0.4
record
2017-08-23 · diff ↗ ·
added 1 export
loop_empty
0.3
record
2017-06-25
R
R 3.4.0 released · 2017-04-21

Package metadata

First published: 2017-06-25
Total releases: 25 / 9 yrs
License: MIT + file LICENSE OSI · relicensed from GPL (>= 2) in 1.2.0
Minimum R: ≥ 3.5
Download size: 69 KB

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("later")

Format

Gao, C., Posit Software, PBC, Chang, W., Cheng, J., Geelnard, M., & Nemerson, E. (2026). later: Utilities for Scheduling Functions to Execute Later with Event Loops (Version 1.4.8) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.later

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 later version 1.4.8 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-10-23. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-10-23, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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