R Developer Page

This site is intended as an intermediate repository for more or less finalized ideas and plans for the R statistical system. Most parts of the site are open to the public, and we welcome discussions on the ideas, but please do not take them for more than that, in particular there is no commitment to actually carry out the plans in finite time unless expressedly stated.

The site also includes a collection of technical papers about R and the R Blog (originally at Blog/public).

For general information about R see the R Project's homepage.

This page (and most of its links) are updated hourly and so may not be absolutely current. The up-to-the-minute version can be seen at https://svn.r-project.org/R-dev-web/trunk/index.html.

Release plans

Version 4.3.1 ("Beagle Scouts") was released on 2023-06-16.

The wrap-up release of the R-4.2.x series was 4.2.3 ("Shortstop Beagle") on 2023-03-15.

The date for the next release is not yet set.

The overall release schedule is to have annual x.y.0 releases in Spring, with patch releases happening on an as-needed basis. It is intended to have a final patch release of the previous version shortly before the next x.y.0 release.

Pointers

The latest NEWS file, which has a section for the current development version of R, and below that for the patches in the current R-patched (part of the previous series).
RSS feeds based on changes to the NEWS file.
Subversion log from the start of 2017 to today.
This log is only updated daily. To get absolutely current information, use Subversion, e.g. for all changes in the last week,
```
svn log -v -r HEAD:\{`date +%Y-%m-%d -d'7 days ago'`\} https://svn.r-project.org/R
```
For older logs in text format, try changing the filename, e.g. to "R_svnlog_2016".
Updating packages for changes in R

R 3.0.0

Package check summaries:
- CRAN
- Bioconductor
Building and checking R source packages for Windows: http://win-builder.r-project.org/
Subversion tips -- notably for R-core
Development guidelines
TODO lists
- Windows version of R.
- tcltk package.
- List from Brian Ripley.
- List from Kurt Hornik.
- List from Martin Mächler.
- List from Paul Murrell.
- List from Duncan Temple Lang.
RFCs and writeups
- A redesign of how to customise a grob in 'grid'.
- Guidelines for *.Rd files.
- Translating R Messages: notes for translation teams.
- List of translation teams: contact these people if you want to help with translations, or contact R-core if you want to add your language to the list.
- Resources for portable programming.
- Using Valgrind on the R memory manager
- Memory profiling
- How S4 Methods Work by John Chambers (on how S4 method dispatch has been working since R version 2.4.0).
- A brief description of new support for raster images in the graphics engine.
- An RFC on a proposal to make sRGB the internal colorspace for R graphics.
- A description of the parse_Rd() parser for Rd files. This document also includes a draft description of the new facility for executing R code within Rd man pages.
- How to write model-fitting functions in R, and especially on how to enable all the safety features.
- A list of things to consider for a possible re-design of the R homepage.
- A brief writeup on how to tag R source files for use with Emacs.
- Some notes on reference counting.
Copy of the noweb sources here, needed for configuring R in maintainer mode.

Older Material

Material in this section is at least 6 months' old, and may or may not still be relevant. In particular, some of the proposals here have been implemented in slightly different ways, or since been extended.

Subversion/CVS logs for 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004 and 2003
Updating packages for changes in R

Notes on Encodings and R, including the current implementation planned for 2.1.0.
Open bugs in the repository (original correspondence truncated to 500 lines per message). No longer updated.
CVS tips
RFCs and writeups

RFC on Sparse matrices in R
An embeddable R library
Some early notes on name spaces, and the name space implementation for R 1.7 (also available in pdf format).
Some notes on references, external objects, or mutable state for R and a simple implementation of external references and finalization added to 1.2. A simple regular expression package provides an example of using this facility.
An outline of a preliminary weak reference mechanism is available. Details are likely to change after more experience is gained with this in some internal uses.
Some notes on the generational collector and its write barrier
Some very preliminary notes on byte code compilation for R
Luke's notes on threading, GUI, and asynchronous IO issues. Some of the reference links are messed up; the full references are in the BibTeX file. Duncan also has a set of notes on threading.
A simple alternate experimental implementation of tcltk as a proof of concept for an approach that uses a separate GUI server process with inter-process message passing (which may be easier to get to work across UNIX/Windows/MacOS).
A preliminary experimental implementation of exception handling for R. Also a simple mechanism for managing dynamic state.
Some notes on possible enhancements to the package installation procedure.
A description of a new way of resolving C and Fortran routines in .C, .Call and .Fortran calls.
Notes and example package of the new, extensible mechanism for converting arguments in .C() calls.
Developers notes on the methods and classes package. Related pages discuss compatibility issues for formal vs old-style classes and methods, and other questions of strategy for future work, including areas where we are beginning to extend the API in Programming with Data.
Notes on some recent changes to functions get, assign, and their relatives, to allow consistent use of environments and other cleanups.
Dataeditor restructuring ideas (outdated)
Thoughts on embedding Tk in R (outdated)
Notes on the = operator in assignments.
Some notes on a new save/load format and a serialization mechanism for R.
An RFC on changes to R base graphics and the graphics device drivers.
Notes and Examples on callbacks that are invoked at the end of each successfully completed top-level expression.
A document-in-progress describing the changes to the graphics system from 1.3.1 to 1.4.0
A proposal for changing the specification of fonts in R and another one extending the discussion to line end/joins and alpha transparency specifications in R.
A list of R devices, including device maintainers and pointers to where the code resides.
A package that provides a null graphics device; includes a vignette, "devNull", that documents how to create a new graphics device as an add on package.
Description of the nonstandard evaluation rules in R 1.5.1 and some suggestions. (updated). Also an R function and docn for making model frames from multiple formulas.

the Ideas List
R and databases area

Material mainly for the core team

The core team can access the source files for this site by

    svn checkout https://svn.r-project.org/R-dev-web/trunk R-dev-web

Any commit to this area will be reflected in the web pages at the next (daily) update. The current version can be seen at https://svn.r-project.org/R-dev-web/trunk/index.html.

Texts to use when entering R into software archives such as freshmeat:
Release management details:
Setting up and signing GPG keys
Advertising material
The R Logo in several resolutions.
HOWTO modify www.R-project.org.