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Show HN: Rv, a Package Manager for R

(github.com)
68 points Keats | 3 comments | 16 May 25 15:37 UTC | HN request time: 0.578s | source

We have been building a package manager for R inspired by Cargo in Rust. The main idea behind rv is to be explicit about the R version in use as well as declaring which dependencies are used in a rproject.toml file for a given project. There's no renv::snapshot equivalent, everything needs to be declared up front, the config file (and resulting lockfile) is the source of truth. This avoids issue where renv might miss information about the installation and is also easy to tweak some packages, eg install one from source and install suggests from another.

If you have used Cargo/npm/any Python package manager/etc, it will be very familiar.

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simpaticoder ◴[16 May 25 16:52 UTC] No.44007555[source]▶
You might want to consider writing a plugin for R with Mise en Place https://mise.jdx.dev/core-tools.html This would extend your reach and might take some of the heavy lifting out of the project. (At least for the runtime portion. I don't think it will help with package management.)
replies(1): >>44008748 #
1. Keats ◴[16 May 25 18:57 UTC] No.44008748[source]▶
I could be wrong but I feel like the overlap between mise and R users is likely very tiny
replies(2): >>44008900 #>>44010176 #
2. 0cf8612b2e1e ◴[16 May 25 19:16 UTC] No.44008900[source]▶
Tend to agree. Majority of users are leaving that icky computer stuff to RStudio and have no idea what happens behind the scenes.
3. simpaticoder ◴[16 May 25 22:03 UTC] No.44010176[source]▶
Mise is pretty new, and it's userbase is tiny (afaik), so the overlap with it and anything is tiny. But I've enjoyed it as a replacement for ruby/node/java/python version managers, and I think it's a solid, thoughtful piece of kit. I think it targets curious, multilingual hackers who I imagine would be the kind of people to try out R to "kick the tires" just for fun (I imagine Elixer, Erlang, and Zig are in there for the same reason...surprised not to see Julia). It's also the case that mise is already doing all the heavy lifting of documentation, website, installation, etc so might as well not reinvent the wheel (such projects always have far more scope than you think, in my experience!) It could free you to making the package manager that much better (a very hard problem in itself).

I'm not affiliated, btw, just a happy user. Shout out to DHH for introducing it (to me) as part of Omakub.