[HN Gopher] Show HN: Rv, a Package Manager for R
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Show HN: Rv, a Package Manager for R
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.
Author : Keats
Score : 61 points
Date : 2025-05-16 15:37 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| mbeavitt wrote:
| Can this be used to effectively create R environments? I'm
| desperate for such a solution.
| goosedragons wrote:
| You can do that with Nix or Guix.
| scrappyjoe wrote:
| Doesn't renv do that? What need does renv not meet for you?
| arbutus8 wrote:
| Ultimately, you're right that `rv` and `renv` get you to the
| same spot, both create reproducible, isolated projects.
| `renv` has a few issues that we often hit that lead to `rv`.
|
| `renv` is an iterative process of installing some packages,
| then snapshotting your project state, and then trying to
| reproduce. The time between the installation and snapshot can
| often lose information (think `install.packages("my_pkg",
| repos = "https://my-repo.com")`, your repo source is lost by
| time the snapshot occurs). You can also install incompatible
| versions over-time.
|
| rv solves both of these problems because it will lock the
| source at the time of installation. Additionally, because it
| is declarative, we are able to resolve the full dependency
| tree before installing packages to ensure everything will be
| compatible.
|
| While I am a big proponent of using rv, if renv fits your
| needs, then switching to rv may not be worth it. For our
| organization, we did have multiple issues with renv, so
| created a replacement for it that we hope others in the
| community will find useful to address their needs.
| aquafox wrote:
| I had similar issues in the past. Setting up renv,
| everything seems good, but after working in a project for a
| few weeks and installing packages, renv constantly
| complains about the library being out-of-sync and resolving
| these complaints took way longer than new ones came around.
| I think renv has good intentions, but there are just too
| many edge cases (Bioconductor, installing an experimental
| package from Github, weird package dependencies etc.), that
| it always failed me in a real-world scenario.
| Keats wrote:
| By default, rv will create a library folder in the same folder
| as your rproject.toml and there's rv activate/deactivate to add
| it to your loaded libs. Pretty much the same stuff as a
| virtualenv in Python.
| okanat wrote:
| I used pixi for that. It uses Conda ecosystem but you get
| proper lockfiles and great native binary package support.
| pupperino wrote:
| {renv} is pretty solid, I've been using it in production for
| years now and have no complaints.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| 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.)
| Keats wrote:
| I could be wrong but I feel like the overlap between mise and R
| users is likely very tiny
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Tend to agree. Majority of users are leaving that icky
| computer stuff to RStudio and have no idea what happens
| behind the scenes.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| 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.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| My biggest issue with R package management is version pinning. If
| I specify an older version of a package, R will fetch the latest
| versions of all its dependencies, regardless if they're
| compatible or not, which leads to manually chasing down and re-
| installing specific versions of dependencies and sub-dependencies
| one-by-one.
|
| Microsoft's CRAN time machine helped solved this, but I think
| they've recently shut it down and I don't really trust Posit to
| not have a version behind a paywall.
| arbutus8 wrote:
| You're hitting one of my (and many people's) main issue with
| the R package distribution system. In CRAN, only one package
| version is available at a time, which makes things like version
| pinning quite difficult. Now the benefit of that is that CRAN
| guarantees all packages will work together at any moment in
| time, but then trying to reach back into the Archive breaks
| that guarantee.
|
| What the CRAN time machine (and now Posit Package Manager) does
| is take that compatibility guarantee, and freeze it so you have
| access to all the same, compatible, packages at any moment in
| time.
|
| While I personally do use PPM fairly extensively, I do
| understand the paywall concern for long-term reproducibility so
| `rv` can help you here, with a bit of manual massaging. I'd
| recommend setting the repositories section of the config file
| to be a snapshot date in PPM that contains the package
| version(s) you're interested in and then installing using that
| repository (taking the benefit of that CRAN guarantee), then in
| both the config file and `rv.lock`, replace all the references
| to the PPM repo with your preferred CRAN mirror. This will
| allow you to resolve to compatible package versions, but then
| for your POSIT concern, will still be able to reproduce using
| the CRAN archive.
| t-kalinowski wrote:
| Posit offers something similar to Microsoft's CRAN Time
| Machine, but it works not only for CRAN, but also for
| Bioconductor and PyPI. You can add a date to the Public Posit
| Package Manager URL to access a snapshot of all packages from
| that day.
|
| For example: https://packagemanager.posit.co/cran/2025-03-02
|
| You can browse available snapshot dates here:
| https://packagemanager.posit.co/client/#/repos/cran/setup?sn...
|
| This also works for PyPI and Python packages:
| https://packagemanager.posit.co/pypi/2025-03-04/simple
| almostkindatech wrote:
| Might be worth looking at groundhog, if you want a 'time
| machine' less likely to have a commercial motive
| xvilka wrote:
| Maybe some code could be shared with the `uv`[1] to avoid re-
| implementing same things.
|
| [1] https://github.com/astral-sh/uv
| Keats wrote:
| We actually do use a bit of their code for the linking phase,
| which they seem to have taken from Cargo. For the rest, Python
| and R are way too different in how they handle packages to
| allow sharing code.
| xgstation wrote:
| is using Rust to rewrite existing package managers a new trendy
| thing
|
| feels we eagerly need cv -> C/C++ package manager
| barslmn wrote:
| Can it be used for installing from bioconductor?
| Keats wrote:
| Not yet but it is on the radar.
| cluckindan wrote:
| Is it possible to override transitive dependencies?
| Keats wrote:
| Yes, if you list it in the rproject.toml from a specific
| repo/url/git etc it will use that
| badmonster wrote:
| I'm curious -- does rv support or plan to support per-project
| isolation of system-level dependencies (e.g., gfortran, libxml2,
| etc.) like what renv sometimes indirectly requires users to
| manage outside R? If not, do you have recommendations for
| managing these in a reproducible way alongside rv?
| mauflows wrote:
| I'm curious how your team ended up doing this. We settled on
| Nix with flakes after some pain with Docker / RStudio Server.
| Keats wrote:
| It's not planned for rv, this is whole other can of worms.
| Something like nix/docker should work but I'm not working on
| that part myself so I can't comment.
| condwanaland wrote:
| Very cool! Are you planning for there to be a corresponding R
| package that exposes the high level commands? The popularity of
| the usethis package really showed the power of keeping people
| within the R interpreter rather than going back and forth with
| the terminal. This is so important for a language like R that has
| so many users without much CS training
| arbutus8 wrote:
| Yes! Absolutely in the plans to have a corresponding R package.
| In the meantime, we've created a `.rv` R environment within rv
| projects that allow users to call things like `.rv$sync()` and
| `.rv$add("pkg")` from the console. Our internal user bases is
| primarily not CS based and have found these functions extremely
| helpful
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