Tools • pkgdev

R Package Development Tools and Libraries

R Packages

Core Development Libraries

These package should generally be utilized in every package being developed.

For package development automation:

For generating documentation (man/) pages:

roxygen2

For testing:

testthat

Other Common Libraries

Some additional useful libraries are:

remotes: for dependencies and installations
available: to check if package name is available
lifecycle: function lifecycle
desc: Package description management
rmarkdown, knitr, and pandoc: for RMarkdown
quarto: for modern documents
pkgdown: generate package documentation static site
testdown: generate test report after running testthat tests
gitdown: generate git commit report

Roxygen Tools

roxygen2md
roxyglobals
rd2list
Rd2roxygen
rd2markdown
roxygen2comment

Dependency Management

pak
attachment
renv
remotes
devtools
pacman
automagic
CodeDepends
sysreqs
deps
pkgnet
functiondepends

Git

gert
gitdown
git2r
git4r
gitr
gitGPT
precommit

Configuration

config
pkgconfig
options

Credentials and Secrets

credentials
keyring
gitcreds
config
askpass

plus base R’s Sys.getenv() and Sys.setenv().

Fundamental Low Level Packages

These packages are not necessarilly called directly but are built on top of as dependencies to higher level libraries (i.e. usethis, devtools, etc.)

pkgload
pkgdepends
pkgbuild
pkgcache
pkgapi
pkgnet

Linting and Styling

goodpractice
lintr
styler
formatR
stylermd
spelling
roxylint
cleanr
janitor
sanitizers
refactor

Documentation

docthis
prettydoc
quarto
pkgdown
testdown
gitdown
papillon
spelling
fusen
badger
badgen
bookdown
altdoc
fledge
newsmd
autonewsmd
docreview
covrpage

Metadata

codemeta
codemetar
pkgstats

Checks and Tests

testthat
testdown
autotest
tinytest
shinytest2
goodpractice
rcmdcheck
spelling
testdat
validate
realtest
roxytest
autotest
checkhelper
codetools
covr
covrpage
checkglobals
rhub

Validation and Assertions

assertthat
testdat
validate

Utilities