R Observatory: Metrics for watcher version 0.2.1

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

watcher

0.2.1Package record

Watch the File System for Changes

0packages dependsuggested by 1

148.5Kdownloads / year

47.8%test coverage

13/13flavors OK

Overview

About

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

R binding for 'libfswatch', a file system monitoring library. Watch files, or directories recursively, for changes in the background. Log activity, or call an R function, upon every change event.

Changes in 0.2.1

Fixes installation failing on systems with a partial or broken system 'libfswatch', now falling back to the bundled build (#48).
Updates bundled 'libfswatch' source to 1.22.0 release. On Linux, this fixes 'Renamed' events reporting only the watched directory path when a file is moved in from an unwatched location.

From NEWS.md in the release

Install

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

install.packages("watcher", 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/watcher")

Development version from r-lib/watcher. 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-watcher

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-watcher

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-watcher

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: 4.1 min · r-devel-windows-x86_64

Status changes

OK13 OK2026-08-04
NOTE12 OK, 1 NOTE2026-08-01
OK14 OK2026-03-10

Advisories

none known

How this is measured·How advisories are found

Documentation

In release 0.2.1

READMEYes · 259 wordsVignettesNoNEWSYes · 100% structured · mentions 0.2.1Citation fileNoWebsiteYes · pkgdown

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

How these are measured

Downloads

148.5K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #1,258 · ~407/day · ~12.4K/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

6.7K30 days

24.4K90 days

148.5K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on461 r2u3 autocran

How downloads are counted

Repository

r-lib/watcher ↗Organization: r-lib

40Stars

2Forks

2Open issues

0Open PRs

9Releases

97Commits

2Commit identities

filesystem-eventsr

97 commits · Last activity 2026-10-12 · +2.6% stars, 30d · Default branch at 0.2.1.9000, ahead of CRAN 0.2.1 (checked 2026-10-25)

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

2025-09-03 · 312026-10-12 · 40

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

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

Checks run against github.com/r-lib/watcher 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

Docs source (4)

README.Rmdpkgdown

GitHub Pages site last deployed 2026-10-12 · The repository has a site deploy workflow

pkgdown site last built 2026-09-25

Coverage (1)

Coverage reporting (Codecov)

CRAN release process (1)

cran-comments.md

Show all practicesHide 1 practice

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 2025-12-01
Seen in the repository: CLAUDE.md
Named in .Rbuildignore: .claude, CLAUDE.md
Named in .gitignore: .claude

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

Seen in the repository: AGENTS.md

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

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

4 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing watcher adds 4 packages (3 with compiled code, 2.7 MB of source tarballs). Heaviest: Rcpp 1.8 MB, rlang 766 KB, later 69 KB.

Depends (1)

R >= 3.5

Imports (3)

later R6 rlang

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (1)

testthat

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

0direct

0indirect

Suggested by 1

Suggests, most downloaded first

shiny

How these are counted

Code & Tests

People & History

People (4)

Charlie Gao

Author, Maintainer since 0.1.0 (2025)

Posit Software, PBC

Copyright holder, Funder

Enrico M. Crisostomo

Copyright holder · added in 0.1.6

libfswatch library

Alan Dipert

Copyright holder · added in 0.1.6

libfswatch library

Releases (9)

Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.

0.2.1Latest
record
2026-09-25 · current release · diff ↗
0.2.0
record
2026-06-22 · diff ↗
0.1.6
record
2026-05-09 · diff ↗
R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
0.1.5
record
2025-12-02 · diff ↗
0.1.4
record
2025-07-16 · diff ↗
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
0.1.3
record
2025-04-10 · diff ↗
0.1.2
record
2025-02-25 · diff ↗
0.1.1
record
2025-02-10 · diff ↗
0.1.0
record
2025-02-06
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24

Package metadata

First published: 2025-02-06
Total releases: 9 / 1 yrs
License: MIT + file LICENSE OSI
Minimum R: ≥ 3.5
Download size: 93 KB

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("watcher")

Format

Gao, C., Posit Software, PBC, Crisostomo, E. M., & Dipert, A. (2026). watcher: Watch the File System for Changes (Version 0.2.1) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.watcher

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 watcher version 0.2.1 [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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