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Dev tools · May 16, 2025

RA

Rv, a Package Manager for R

We have been building a package manager for R inspired by Cargo in Rust. The main idea behind rv is to be explicit about the R version in use as well as declaring which dependencies are used in a rproject.toml file for a given project. There's no renv::snapshot equivalent, everything needs to be declared up front, the config file (and resulting lockfile) is the source of truth. This avoids issue where renv might miss information about the installation and is also easy to tweak some packages, eg install one from source and install suggests from another. If you have used…

In plain words

Rv is a package manager for R that requires developers to explicitly declare R versions and project dependencies in a configuration file rather than inferring them automatically. Inspired by Cargo and similar tools in other languages, it uses a source-of-truth approach where the config and lockfile are definitive, eliminating gaps that can occur with snapshot-based systems. It allows fine-grained control over installation methods, such as building specific packages from source or including suggested dependencies selectively.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

In the maker’s words, at launch

We have been building a package manager for R inspired by Cargo in Rust. The main idea behind rv is to be explicit about the R version in use as well as declaring which dependencies are used in a rproject.toml file for a given project. There's no renv::snapshot equivalent, everything needs to be declared up front, the config file (and resulting lockfile) is the source of truth. This avoids issue where renv might miss information about the installation and is also easy to tweak some packages, eg install one from source and install suggests from another. If you have used Cargo/npm/any Python package manager/etc, it will be very familiar.

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