R: Computations on the Dependency Hierarchy of Packages

package_dependencies {tools}

R Documentation

Computations on the Dependency Hierarchy of Packages

Description

Find (recursively) dependencies or reverse dependencies of packages.

Usage

package_dependencies(packages = NULL, db, 
        which = c("Depends", "Imports", "LinkingTo"), 
	recursive = FALSE, reverse = FALSE)

Arguments

`packages`	a character vector of package names.
`db`	character matrix as from available.packages(), or data frame variants thereof. Alternatively, a package database like the one available from http://cran.R-project.org/web/packages/packages.rds.
`which`	a character vector listing the types of dependencies, a subset of `c("Depends", "Imports", "LinkingTo", "Suggests", "Enhances")`. Character string `"all"` is shorthand for that vector, character string `"most"` for the same vector without `"Enhances"`.
`recursive`	logical: should (reverse) dependencies of (reverse) dependencies (and so on) be included?
`reverse`	logical: if `FALSE` (default), regular dependencies are calculated, otherwise reverse dependencies.

Value

Named list with one element for each package in argument packages, each consists of a character vector naming the (recursive) (reverse) dependencies of that package.

For given packages which are not found in the db, NULL entries are returned, as opposed to character(0) entries which indicate no dependencies.

Examples

## Not run: 
pdb <- available.packages()
deps <- package_dependencies(packages = "MASS", pdb,
                    which = c("Depends", "Imports", "LinkingTo", "Suggests"),
                    recursive = TRUE, reverse = TRUE)
length(deps$MASS)

## End(Not run)