R Repositories Data

Retrieve metadata about packages from repositories to explore package dependencies, links between help pages, aliases, package availability on a given date, and other repository-dependent outcome. In addition, it provides access to information about the processes at CRAN. This metadata can be used to help package maintainers and users navigate changes to dependencies and with reproducibility.

repo.data

The goal of repo.data is to make repository data accessible. Mainly it consumes existing data but the idea is to also generate it.

When a function is specific of a repository it will start with its name: cran_ or bioc_. Some functions have their equivalent for all repositories that provide this information (CRAN and Bioconductor that I’m aware of).

Installation

From CRAN:

install.packages("repo.data")

You can install the development version of repo.data like so:

remotes::install_github("llrs/repo.data")

Example

We can get a data.frame of all packages on CRAN archive:

library(repo.data)
#> 
#> Attaching package: 'repo.data'
#> The following object is masked from 'package:stats':
#> 
#>     alias
ca <- cran_archive()
#> Warning: There are 5 packages both archived and published
#> This indicate manual CRAN intervention.
head(ca)
#>     Package            Datetime Version   User    Size   Status
#> 1 a11yShiny 2026-03-30 21:20:21   0.1.3 ligges   71907 archived
#> 2 a11yShiny 2026-05-27 09:50:14   0.1.4 ligges   71919  current
#> 3        A3 2013-02-07 10:00:29   0.9.1 hornik   45252 archived
#> 4        A3 2013-03-26 19:58:40   0.9.2 ligges   45907 archived
#> 5        A3 2015-08-16 23:05:54   1.0.0 hornik   42810 archived
#> 6       a5R 2026-03-16 20:10:23   0.2.0 ligges 3685016 archived

We can also check CRAN comments about the packages on its archive:

cc <- cran_comments()
#> Downloading and caching CRAN's comments for this session.
head(cc)
#>    package
#> 1       A3
#> 2    aaSEA
#> 3      aba
#> 4   abbyyR
#> 5   abcADM
#> 6 abcdeFBA
#>                                                                          comment
#> 1         Archived on 2025-06-13 as issues were not corrected despite reminders.
#> 2 Archived on 2022-06-21 as check problems were not corrected despite reminders.
#> 3           Archived on 2022-03-27 as check problems were not corrected in time.
#> 4                            Archived on 2023-11-03 at the maintainer's request.
#> 5                   Archived on 2023-03-02 as issues were not corrected in time.
#> 6           Archived on 2022-03-07 as check problems were not corrected in time.
#>         date   action
#> 1 2025-06-13 archived
#> 2 2022-06-21 archived
#> 3 2022-03-27 archived
#> 4 2023-11-03 archived
#> 5 2023-03-02 archived
#> 6 2022-03-07 archived

Or estimate the last date of update of our packages, by the information on the session info or a data.frame:

cran_session(session = sessionInfo())
#> [1] "2026-09-01 15:10:10 CEST"
ip <- installed.packages()
cran_date(ip)
#> Warning: Some packages are not currently available. Omitting packages:
#> 'airway', 'annotate', 'AnnotationDbi', 'Biobase', 'BiocGenerics', 'BiocIO', 'biocmake', 'BiocParallel', 'BiocStyle', 'BiocVersion', 'Biostrings', 'bumphunter', 'cigarillo', 'covrpage', 'DelayedArray', 'DelayedMatrixStats', 'DESeq2', 'dir.expiry', 'genefilter', 'GenomicAlignments', 'GenomicFeatures', 'GenomicRanges', 'GEOquery', 'GO.db', 'GOSemSim', 'GSEABase', 'h5mread', 'HDF5Array', 'IlluminaHumanMethylationEPICanno.ilm10b4.hg19', 'illuminaio', 'IRanges', 'KEGGREST', 'MatrixGenerics', 'minfi', 'org.Hs.eg.db', 'preprocessCore', 'reactome.db', 'rhdf5', 'rhdf5filters', 'Rhdf5lib', 'Rhtslib', 'rostemplate', 'Rsamtools', 'rtracklayer', 'S4Arrays', 'S4Vectors', 'Seqinfo', 'siggenes', 'SparseArray', 'sparseMatrixStats', 'SummarizedExperiment', 'XVector'.
#> [1] "2026-09-01 15:20:07 CEST"

Related packages

Other packages and related analysis :

Task views: https://github.com/epiverse-connect/ctv-analysis/
static packages: pkgstats
Bioconductor: biopkgtools
R-universe: universe
cranly: About package dependencies and authors of packages.
versions: A package about installing packages versions. install.dates() requires a CRAN date, if you are unsure you can use cran_date() to estimate it given a library() or a sessionInfo report.
checkpoint provides tools to ensure the results of R code are repeatable over time.