Make it reproducible! Package management solutions in R

R has a continuously expanding and evolving package universe in which most packages depend on several other ones. CRAN makes it very easy to install the most recent versions of R packages but makes it less straightforward to re-install specific versions of packages. This is problematic since backward compatibility of R packages is not guaranteed. In a one-off analytic scenario, this is not a major concern. However, it becomes a decisive factor in an enterprise context, where it must be ensured that a particular state of the software infrastructure can be restored at any time. In this talk I will give a brief overview about several tools which can be used for package management in R, including packrat, MRAN, checkpoint, GRAN, RDepot, drat, sysreqs, crancache, Docker (and containerit), and Nix.

Tóth Dénes
Founder, Kogentum Ltd.

Denes Toth is the founder of Kogentum Ltd. with strong academic background formerly working on the field of test development and cognitive neuroscience. At present he participates in automatized data analytic, visualization and optimization projects as lead developer.