[R-pkg-devel] Read CRAN package DESCRIPTION without downloading source

[Henrik Bengtsson]

All DESCRIPTION files are available as:

https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/{pkg}/DESCRIPTION

For example, https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/cli/DESCRIPTION.

So, you could manually iterate over all CRAN packages and download these
files one by one. An alternative is to rsync just the DESCRIPTION files,
cf. https://cran.r-project.org/mirror-howto.html.

FWIW, NAMESPACE files are available in the same way.

Henrik

On Sun, May 18, 2025, 07:10 Kenny, Christopher <
christopherkenny using fas.harvard.edu> wrote:

> I think this is a good case for using the unofficial GitHub CRAN mirror.
> Then you can just use the search like so:
>
>
> https://github.com/search?q=org%3Acran%20%22Config%2Frextendr%2Fversion%22%20&type=code
>
> Best,
> Chris
>
> ________________________________
> From: R-package-devel <r-package-devel-bounces using r-project.org> on behalf
> of Josiah Parry <josiah.parry using gmail.com>
> Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2025 9:59 AM
> To: R Package Development <r-package-devel using r-project.org>
> Subject: [R-pkg-devel] Read CRAN package DESCRIPTION without downloading
> source
>
> Hey Folks,
>
> Is there  a way to view the DESCRIPTION file for packages on CRAN _without_
> downloading the source?
>
> I'd like to identify packages with the field `Config/rextendr/version` in
> order to be able to triage code changes in the future.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Josiah
>
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