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rdeps

• Overview
• Features
• Installation
• Get started
• Citation
• Contributing

Overview

The goal of the R package rdeps is to provide a tool to identify all external packages used in a project (package, compendium, website, etc.) and to list them in the DESCRIPTION file.

Features

rdeps screens all .R, .Rmd, and .qmd files to extract the name of packages used in a project. This package detects packages called with library(foo), require(foo), foo::bar(), and use("foo", "bar") and adds these dependencies to the DESCRIPTION file in the sections Depends, Imports, and Suggests.

Different types of dependencies are handled:

  • if the package is called with library(foo) or require(foo), it will be added to the section Depends of the DESCRIPTION file (except for vignettes and tests);
  • if the package is called with foo::bar() or use("foo", "bar"), it will be added to the section Imports of the DESCRIPTION file (except for vignettes and tests);
  • if the package is only used in vignettes or tests, it will be added to the section Suggests of the DESCRIPTION file.

Since the version 0.4, rdeps introduces the .rdepsignore file. This file can be used to ignore files or folders when screening files to detect dependencies. This file can be handled with the function add_to_rdepsignore().

Installation

You can install the stable version from CRAN with:

## Install stable version of < rdeps > from CRAN ----
install.packages("rdeps")

Or you can install the development version from GitHub with:

## Install < remotes > package (if not already installed) ----
if (!requireNamespace("remotes", quietly = TRUE)) {
  install.packages("remotes")
}

## Install < rdeps > from GitHub ----
remotes::install_github("frbcesab/rdeps")

Then you can attach the package rdeps:

Get started

rdeps contains two main function: - add_deps(). - add_to_rdepsignore()

Note: the project must contain a DESCRIPTION file. A DESCRIPTION file can be created and added to an existing project with the function usethis::use_description().

Citation

Please cite rdeps as:

Casajus Nicolas (2025) rdeps: An R package to identify external packages used in a project. R package version 0.4, https://github.com/frbcesab/rdeps/.

Contributing

All types of contributions are encouraged and valued. For more information, check out our Contributor Guidelines.

Please note that the rdeps project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By contributing to this project, you agree to abide by its terms.