Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

sysreqr 0.1.0

First public release.

Preflight checks

• check_packages() resolves the system packages an R package needs on a given Linux platform. Four backends are available: "auto" (default), "bundled", "ppm", and "pak".
• check_library() audits installed packages in an R library path.
• check_project() and detect_project_packages() scan a project directory, preferring renv.lock, then DESCRIPTION, then source files.

Platform handling

• detect_platform() reads /etc/os-release on Linux, sw_vers on macOS, and parses fixture files for tests.
• detect_package_manager() returns the package manager for a platform (apt, dnf, yum, zypper, apk, brew).
• resolve_platform() accepts NULL, an existing platform object, <distro>-<version> shorthand, or a codename alias (jammy, noble, resolute, bookworm, trixie).

Commands and outputs

• install_command() generates platform-appropriate install commands.
• dockerfile() and write_dockerfile_snippet() produce Dockerfile snippets.
• github_actions() (alias gha()) produces a GitHub Actions YAML step.
• admin_request() drafts a plain-text request for system administrators.
• write_install_script() writes a POSIX shell script.
• write_report() and write_json() persist a plan to disk.
• as_install_plan() returns a structured list suitable for downstream tooling.

Diagnostics

• diagnose_log() (alias diagnose_install_log()) matches common compiler and linker error patterns and resolves failed package names back to system requirements.
• check_error() is a convenience wrapper that reads geterrmessage().
• diagnose_failed_packages() resolves a known list of failed R packages.

Posit Package Manager

• ppm_platforms(), check_ppm(), ppm_repo(), ppm_sysreqs(), and use_ppm() integrate with the Posit Package Manager API and binary repository URLs.

Setup guidance

• setup_advice() produces a practical, beginner-friendly Linux setup checklist with optional shell-script output.
• explain() prints a friendly per-package explanation.

Documentation

• Five HTML vignettes: preflight setup, diagnosing failures, GNU/Linux fundamentals (for newcomers to Linux), Docker and CI workflows, and an FAQ.
• Every exported function has a runnable example.
• Reference index grouped by topic on the pkgdown site.

Correctness and portability

• Bundled system-package names are now portable across Debian and Ubuntu: default-libmysqlclient-dev (was libmysqlclient-dev, which does not exist on Debian), libgsl-dev (was libgsl0-dev), and libfreetype-dev (was libfreetype6-dev).
• detect_project_packages() now detects requireNamespace() calls and ignores package names that appear only in line comments.
• setup_advice() generates Debian repository setup using the modern deb822 Signed-By keyring format (matching CRAN’s current Debian instructions), drops a no-op Fedora repoquery line, and presents the Fedora COPR step as optional.
• Added AlmaLinux 9 and 10 as known platforms so ppm_repo() and check_ppm() work for them.
• The internal JSON parser now rejects unescaped control characters, per the JSON specification.

Design notes

• sysreqr has zero required dependencies: no Imports, no Depends beyond base R. The Suggests field lists testthat, knitr, rmarkdown, and withr, used only for tests and vignette building; none of them are loaded at run time.
• Optional live backends can use Posit Package Manager (over HTTPS) and pak::pkg_sysreqs(), both of which are detected at run time and never required.
• The package ships a static bundled database of system requirements for common CRAN packages. The database is refreshed with each release. Use backend = "ppm" or backend = "pak" when newer live metadata is needed.