CRANberries: Keep up-to-date with R packages

There are many R packages on CRAN (1735 as of this writing). There are updates to existing packages almost every day, and new packages are added regularly. Major updates and new packages are sometimes announced on the r-packages mailing list, but not always. An easy way to keep up-to-date with this activity is to subscribe to the CRANberries RSS feed, created by Dirk Eddelbuettel. You can also view the entries directly at the CRANberries webpage. The feed (and page) includes notifications of every package added to or updated on CRAN. There are a couple of limitations. First of all, it…

There are many R packages on CRAN (1735 as of this writing).  There are updates to existing packages almost every day, and new packages are added regularly.  Major updates and new packages are sometimes announced on the r-packages mailing list, but not always.

An easy way to keep up-to-date with this activity is to subscribe to the CRANberries RSS feed, created by Dirk Eddelbuettel. You can also view the entries directly at the CRANberries webpage. The feed (and page) includes notifications of every package added to or updated on CRAN.

There are a couple of limitations. First of all, it doesn't track packages in repositories other than CRAN (like Bioconductor). Also, it would be nice to see the details of the changes (such as the diff of the NEWS file — right now it simply reports files that have changed). Nonetheless, it's a great service and an easy add to your favourite RSS reader.

Here's a typical entry for an updated package:

 DESCRIPTION | 23 +++++++++++++----------
 NEWS | 5 +++++
 R/plotld.R | 5 ++++-
 man/plotld.Rd | 11 ++++++++---
 man/plotpc.Rd | 21 ++++++++++++---------
 tests/tests/test.plotpc.R | 3 ++-
 tests/tests/test.plotpc.Rout.save | 5 +++--
 7 files changed, 47 insertions(+), 26 deletions(-)

And here's a typical entry for a new package: