Collaborative software development using R-Forge

In the R world, SCM is not a new idea; in fact, the R Development Core Team has always been using SCM tools for the R sources, first by means of Concurrent Versions System (CVS, see Cederqvist et al., 2006), and then via Subversion (SVN, see Pilato et al., 2004). A central repository is hosted by ETH Zürich mainly for managing the development of the base R system. Mailing lists like R-help, R-devel and many others are currently the main communication channels in the R community. Also beyond the base system, many R contributors employ SCM tools for managing their R packages, e.g., via web-based SVN repositories like SourceForge (http://SourceForge.net/) or Google Code (http://Code.Google.com/). However, there has been no central SCM repository providing services suited to the specific needs of R package developers. Since early 2007, the R-project offers such a central platform to the R community. R-Forge (http://R-Forge.R-project.org/) provides a set of tools for source code management and various webbased features. It aims to provide a platform for collaborative development of R packages, R-related software or further projects. Second, we give a hands-on tutorial on how users and developers can get started with R-Forge. In particular, we illustrate how people can register, set up new projects, use RForge’s SCM facilities, provide their packages on RForge, host a project-specific website, and how package maintainers submit a package to the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN, http://CRAN. R-project.org/). Finally, we summarize recent developments and give a brief outlook to future work.