pkgndep

pkgndep quantifies dependency heaviness by calculating the unique dependencies parent R packages introduce to their child packages across CRAN and Bioconductor.

Key Features:

• Dependency Heaviness Metric: Computes a "dependency heaviness" value that quantifies the number of unique dependencies each parent package contributes to its children.
• Optimization Solutions: Identifies "heavy" parent packages and reports candidate optimization pathways to reduce dependency complexity among dependents.
• Ecosystem-scale Analysis: Applies the metric across CRAN and Bioconductor to identify and rank packages that contribute most to dependency heaviness.

Scientific Applications:

• Bioinformatics Research: Enables selection and assessment of R packages for robust and efficient data analysis pipelines by revealing dependency burdens.
• Package Development: Guides developers in refactoring packages to reduce unnecessary dependencies and improve performance and compatibility.
• Ecosystem Management: Assists repository maintainers in detecting and prioritizing dependency-related issues within CRAN and Bioconductor.

Methodology:

Calculates the unique dependencies introduced by each parent package to its children to quantify dependency heaviness and systematically evaluates dependency structures; demonstrated on 22,076 CRAN and Bioconductor packages on June 8, 2022.