Jetpack: The newest addition to the package manager family

It is time to welcome the newest addition to the package manager family!

Jetpack is a package manager for R. Inspired by Yarn and Bundler, Jetpack is easy to use, designed for reproducibility and it is built for collaboration and secure applications.

So far, it offers support for deployment in server and Docker while there’s ongoing work to provide support for Heroku with the R dependency management system, Packrat.

For now, let’s have a closer look at the basic commands.

Install –Install packages for a project using jetpack install

Add – You can add a new package using jetpack add dplyr, add a specific version with jetpack add dplyr@0.7.5 or add from GitHub or another remote source using
jetpack add dplyr --remote=github::tidyverse/dplyr

Update –  You can update a package using jetpack update dplyr

Remove –  You can remove a package using jetpack remove dplyr os remove a remote with jetpack remove dplyr --remote=github::tidyverse/dplyr

SEE ALSO: “Machine learning tends to have a Python flavor because it’s more user-friendly than Java”

Getting started

Eager to give it a try? Jetpack is available for download on GitHub.

Source: ankane/jetpack

What is Jetpack up against?

Speaking of package managers, let’s see what competition Jetpack is currently facing.

Source: Slant

According to the ranking on Slant, JavaScript’s Yarn is by far the number one package manager at the moment. Surprisingly, despite npm’s general popularity, it appears just at the bottom of the top 5 package managers.

What is your number one package manager?