Computer Science

Computer Science ›› 2024, Vol. 51 ›› Issue (6): 1-11.doi: 10.11896/jsjkx.230200069

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Empirical Study on Dependencies and Updates of R Packages

CHENG Hongzheng1, YANG Wenhua1,2   

  1. 1 College of Computer Science and Technology,Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics,Nanjing 211106,China
    2 Collaborative Innovation Center of Novel Software Technology and Industrialization,Nanjing 210023,China
  • Received:2023-02-10 Revised:2023-05-01 Online:2024-06-15 Published:2024-06-05
  • About author:CHENG Hongzheng,born in 1998,postgraduate,is a student member of CCF(No.O7976G).His main research interests include intelligent software engineering and empirical study.
    YANG Wenhua,born in 1990,Ph.D,associate professor,is a member of CCF(No.96710M).His main research interests include software engineering and self-adaptive software systems.

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Abstract: As an excellent tool for statistical analysis and statistical cartography,R is very popular in the field of statistical analysis and artificial intelligence,and it has a rich open-source ecosystem with a growing number of R packages.The characteristics of the R package development model,i.e.,the new development of an R package is often implemented by introducing existing R packages to achieve functionality,resulting in very complex dependencies between R packages and even dependency conflicts.The other factor that causes this problem is the update of the R package,in addition to the dependencies.Therefore,an in-depth empi-rical study of the dependencies and updates of R packages is needed to understand the current state of development of existing R packages.However,existing empirical studies on R have focused on the entire R ecosystem without a specific analysis of the dependencies and updates of R packages.To bridge this gap,this paper presents a detailed analysis of the dependencies,the updates,the potential conflicts of dependencies,and the updates of dependencies of common R packages based on data from CRAN(Comprehensive R Archive Network) and GitHub.It is found that the dependency relationships between R packages are complex,and the number of packages each R package depends on is generally high.Still,the dependencies are concentrated in a part of R packages.Although the update frequency of common R packages is fast,there are still many conflicts(inconsistencies) between depen-dencies,and we detected and classified the dependency conflicts of these R packages.The results of our empirical study can provide R developers and users with a better understanding of the current state of R package development,and provide some suggestions that can help R package developers avoid pitfalls in the development process,as well as directions that researchers can explore further on issues related to R package dependencies and updates.

Key words: R package, Empirical study, Dependency, Update, Dependency conflict

CLC Number: 

  • TP311
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