ctv
CRAN Task Views
Infrastructure for task views to CRAN-style repositories: Querying task views and installing the associated packages (client-side tools), generating HTML pages and storing task view information in the repository (server-side tools).
CRAN Task Views
Overview
CRAN task views aim to provide some guidance which packages on the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) are relevant for tasks related to a certain topic. They give a brief overview of the included packages which can also be automatically installed using the ctv package. The views are intended to have a sharp focus so that it is sufficiently clear which packages should be included (or excluded) - and they are not meant to endorse the "best" packages for a given task.
- List of available CRAN Task Views
- GitHub repository of the CRAN Task View Initiative
- Introduction: Zeileis A, Bivand R, Eddelbuettel D, Hornik K, Piaskowski J, Vialaneix N (2025). "The CRAN Task View Initiative." The R Journal, 17(2), 4-14. doi:10.32614/RJ-2025-011.
Installation
To automatically install the views, the ctv package needs to be installed. The stable version of is available on CRAN:
install.packages("ctv")
The latest development version can be installed from R-universe:
install.packages("ctv", repos = "https://zeileis.R-universe.dev")
When ctv is available, the task views can be installed via install.views() or update.views()
(where the latter only installs those packages which are not installed and up-to-date),
e.g.,
ctv::install.views("Econometrics")
ctv::update.views("Econometrics")
To query information about a particular task view on CRAN from within R or to obtain the list of all task views available, respectively, the following commands are provided:
ctv::ctv("Econometrics")
ctv::available.views()
Contributions
The task views as a whole are overseen and coordinated by the CRAN Task View Editors and each individual task view is maintained by a group of volunteers. See the repository of the CRAN Task View Initiative for details on how to contribute to an existing task view or propose a new one.