First Public Version of the r-hub Builder

The r-hub builder is the first major project of the R consortium. It is an R package build and continuous integration service, open to all members of the R community.

Goals for R-Hub include:

• simplify the R package development process: creating a package, building binaries and continuous integration, publishing, distributing and maintaining it;
• encourage community contributions; and
• pre-test CRAN package submissions to ease burden on CRAN maintainers.

What’s available

• Linux builders for uploaded R source packages. You can watch the package check process in real time. Currently Debian and Fedora builders are available. Builds are performed in Docker containers, and new builders can be added easily.
• Automatic detection of system requirements. We built a system requirements database that allows us to automatically install system software needed for R packages. Note that the database needs constant improvements, and if it fails for your R package, please let us know. See below.
• Flexible package dependencies. You don’t need to have all your package dependencies on CRAN in order to use r-hub. We support devtools-styleRemotes fields in DESCRIPTION, so you can depend on GitHub, BitBucket, etc. packages. See more about this at https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/devtools/vignettes/dependencies.html

Go to https://builder.r-hub.io to try the r-hub builder!

What’s coming?

Mostly everything else that was promised in the proposal The two major features that are coming soon are

• Windows builds, and
• The r-hub CI. You’ll be able to trigger builds from your GitHub repositories.

You can help

• Please try and run the builder on your R package, and report failures at https://github.com/r-hub/feedback/issues or by emailing support@r-hub.io.
• If your package does not build because of a non-detected system requirement, please let us know at https://github.com/r-hub/sysreqsdb/issues
• The code for r-hub itself is open source and available at GitHub. Your contributions are welcome!