[R] Growth of CRAN?

[Spencer Graves]

Hi, Hadley, et al.:


       Is anyone interested in mining the link Hadley provided below to 
compile a data.frame of the growth of the size of CRAN? I'll happily add 
it to the Ecdat package unless someone would rather put it someplace 
else.  It would be great for a study using, e.g., Bayesian Model 
Averaging to forecast the growth.  I got good results using the "drc" 
package, but findFn("growth") identified others that could ultimately be 
more useful.


       Spencer


On 4/14/2014 8:15 AM, Hadley Wickham wrote:
> Yes, because it has every version of every DESCRIPTION.
>
> Hadley
>
> On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 11:13 AM, Spencer Graves
> <spencer.graves at structuremonitoring.com> wrote:
>> Hi, Hadley:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 4/14/2014 5:53 AM, Hadley Wickham wrote:
>>> For finer level detail, have a look at
>>> https://github.com/hadley/cran-packages. It contains the description
>>> file of every package ever uploaded to CRAN (the cache is a few months
>>> out of date, but you can easily re-run)
>>
>>
>>        Can that be mined to get the date of first commit to CRAN? Dates in
>> description files are sometimes updated.  Example:  The "Date" in the
>> Description file for the version of "fda" now on CRAN is 2013-05, but fda
>> was on CRAN at least in 2006 and probably earlier.  You are listed as second
>> author on that package based on work you did in by 2006.
>>
>>
>>        Spencer
>>
>>
>>> Hadley
>>>
>>> On Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 12:59 PM, Spencer Graves
>>> <spencer.graves at structuremonitoring.com> wrote:
>>>>         What data exist on the growth of CRAN?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>         John Fox published some data on it in 2009 ("Aspects of the Social
>>>> Organization and Trajectory of the R Project", R Journal,
>>>> http://journal.r-project.org/archive/2009-2/RJournal_2009-2_Fox.pdf).
>>>> Below
>>>> please find those numbers plus some additions of mine since. If anyone
>>>> else
>>>> has other numbers (or more accurate numbers), I'd like to know.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>         I plan to add a "CRANpackages" data set to the "Ecdat" package
>>>> with a
>>>> title, "Growth of CRAN" unless someone else provides better numbers or
>>>> title.  [If it already exists on CRAN, I'd like to know. I doubt if it
>>>> does,
>>>> because I couldn't find it with findFn{sos} for 'number of CRAN packages'
>>>> and 'growth of CRAN'.]
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>         Thanks,
>>>>         Spencer
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> date    packages
>>>> 2001-06-21    110
>>>> 2001-12-17    129
>>>> 2002-06-12    162
>>>> 2003-05-27    219
>>>> 2003-11-16    273
>>>> 2004-06-05    357
>>>> 2004-10-12    406
>>>> 2005-06-18    548
>>>> 2005-12-16    647
>>>> 2006-05-31    739
>>>> 2006-12-12    911
>>>> 2007-04-12    1000
>>>> 2007-11-16    1300
>>>> 2008-03-18    1427
>>>> 2008-10-18    1614
>>>> 2009-09-17    1952
>>>> 2012-06-12    3786
>>>> 2012-11-01    4082
>>>> 2012-12-14    4210
>>>> 2013-10-28    4960
>>>> 2013-11-08    5000
>>>> 2014-04-13    5428
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> * NOTE:  These numbers may differ slightly from other sources. Numbers
>>>> through 2009 were read from a plot in Fox's paper.  Numbers since were
>>>> read
>>>> at an arbitrary time during the day, Pacific time, from a mirror in the
>>>> United States and could differ from those recorded by someone else using
>>>> a
>>>> different mirror having the same date in local time  someplace else.
>>>>
>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>>>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
>>>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>>>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>>>

-- 
Spencer Graves, PE, PhD
President and Chief Technology Officer
Structure Inspection and Monitoring, Inc.
751 Emerson Ct.
San José, CA 95126
ph:  408-655-4567
web:  www.structuremonitoring.com