collidr

collidr checks for namespace collisions against half a million packages and functions on CRAN.

Usage

See if a function/package called “group_by”, like so

# install.packages("collidr")
library(collidr)

CRAN_collisions("group_by", CRANdf = getCRAN())

substitute “group_by” for any function name you wish to check

Advantages

Distinctly named functions

reduce code ambiguity, and,
reduce unintentional function calls
- e.g. you may code select() meaning dplyr::select(), but instead (uninentionally) invoke MASS::select() due to the MASS library being loaded after dplyr

Caveats

collidr::CRANdf is the data.frame used to store the names of packages and functions found on CRAN. You can see when it was last updated with attributes(collidr::CRANdf)$last_updated. Retrieve a more up to date version with getCRAN().

Due to how this data.frame is obtained, the results are not perfect. The absense of a function name from the data.frame does not guarantee that the function is not on CRAN, and, conversely, a function name found in the data.frame doesn’t guarantee that it is a function in a package on CRAN.

These imperfections are due to imperfections in the regular expressions required to parse the ~16,000 libraries found on CRAN.

How collidr Works

collidr runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure and visits CRAN every 3 hours, parses package information, and stores and updated data.frame in S3. The data.frame is accessible for download, or via getCRAN()

Issues and Feature Requests

When reporting an issue, please include:

Example code that reproduces the observed behavior.
An explanation of what the expected behavior is.

For feature requests, raise an issue with the following:

The desired functionality
Example inputs and desired output

Pull Requests

Pull requests are welcomed.

Any new functions should follow the conventions established by the the package’s existing functions. Please ensure

Functions are sensibly named
The intent of the contribution is clear
At least one example is provided in the documentation

Build Info

Whenever CRANdf is updated, use save(CRANdf, file = "data/CRANdf.RData", version = 2, compress='xz') to save it

And build/check with:

R CMD build collidr && R CMD check collidr_0.1.3.tar.gz --as-cran

stevecondylios/collidr