[R-pkg-devel] UseR! Session: Navigating the jungle of R packages.

[ProfJCNash]

Navigating the Jungle of R Packages

The R ecosystem has many packages in various collections,
especially CRAN, Bioconductor, and GitHub. While this
richness of choice speaks to the popularity and
importance of R, the large number of contributed packages
makes it difficult for users to find appropriate tools for
their work.

A session on this subject has been approved for UseR! in
Brussels. The tentative structure is three short
introductory presentations, followed by discussion or
planning work to improve the tools available to help
users find the best R package and function for their needs.

The currently proposed topics are

- wrapper packages that allow diverse tools that perform
  similar functions to be accessed by unified calls

- collaborative mechanisms to create and update Task Views

- search and sort tools to find packages.

At the time of writing we have tentative presenters for
the topics, but welcome others. We hope these presentations
at useR! 2017 will be part of a larger discussion that will
contribute to an increased team effort after the conference
to improve the the support for R users in these areas.


John Nash, Julia Silge, Spencer Graves