LoginSign Up
← Back to all sparks
P

pak

INFRA · APIS
Velocity5.0

Fast, parallel R package installer that resolves dependencies automatically

github.com/r-lib/pak ↗

pak's roadmap is written by enterprise R deployments and Posit Package Manager.

rpackage-managementposit-package-managerenterprisegithub-remotes
◆Current state
pak is the fast, parallel package installer for R. Recent releases concentrate almost entirely on environments where R runs behind a corporate boundary: Posit Package Manager single sign-on, private PPM instances serving source where a binary was requested, custom HTTPS certificates, and genuinely offline Bioconductor behaviour.
◆Where it's heading
Two currents run together. One is enterprise plumbing — authentication, certificates, private repositories. The other is meeting repositories where they actually are, auto-detecting an R package in a subdirectory of a multi-language GitHub repo and restoring installs from releases and pull requests.
◆Prediction
Expect continued PPM-driven work and more remote-resolution edge cases as monorepos and non-standard repository layouts become the norm.

◆Recent moves

  1. 21d ago

    pak 0.11.1 restores installs from GitHub releases and PRs

    Restores installation from GitHub releases and pull requests, a regression that would have blocked common development workflows, and further improves handling when a repository serves a source package instead of the requested binary.

    View source ↗
  2. 28d ago

    pak 0.11.0 auto-detects R packages in repo subdirectories

    GitHub remotes auto-detect an R package in a well-known subdirectory when the repository root has no DESCRIPTION, making multi-language repos installable without specifying subdir. The configure_args and configure_vars options also close a compatibility gap with install.packages().

    View source ↗
  3. 2mo ago

    pak 0.10.0 supports Posit Package Manager single sign-on

    Adds single sign-on authentication for Posit Package Manager. A one-line changelog that removes a real adoption blocker for organisations where SSO is the only sanctioned path to an internal repository.

    View source ↗
  4. 3mo ago

    pak 0.9.5 fixes vector library paths in lockfile_create()

    Fixes vector-valued library paths in lockfile_create() and improves PPM binary handling on private instances. Narrow corrections within the enterprise path.

    View source ↗
  5. 3mo ago

    pak 0.9.4 restores support for custom HTTPS certificates

    Custom HTTPS certificates work again — a regression fix that matters exactly to the corporate environments the rest of this release series targets.

    View source ↗
  6. 4mo ago

    pak 0.9.3 makes disabling Bioconductor fully offline

    Disabling Bioconductor now truly prevents any network contact rather than merely skipping its packages, which matters in air-gapped installs. pak also gains macOS binaries for R 4.6.x and can consider packages installed across multiple libraries.

    View source ↗