NEWS.md

sysreqr 0.2.0

New features

• The bundled fallback database is now cross-distro: it stores system package names for apt, dnf (also used by yum platforms), zypper, and apk, so backend = "bundled" and offline fallbacks work on Fedora, RHEL and its rebuilds, openSUSE, and Alpine, not only on Debian and Ubuntu. The apt, dnf, and zypper names are generated from the Posit Package Manager database; the Alpine names are hand curated. The "auto" backend now prefers bundled data on all of these platforms.
• Log diagnosis recognizes many more missing libraries. The direct error patterns grew from 12 to 33 and now cover, among others, zlib, bzip2, xz, png, jpeg, tiff, freetype, fontconfig, cairo, SQLite, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, libsodium, GMP, MPFR, GLPK, GEOS, ImageMagick, poppler, leptonica, tesseract, ICU, webp, and Cyrus SASL, each with names for all supported package managers.
• New gitlab_ci() generates a GitLab CI YAML job that installs the system packages a plan needs. GitLab CI jobs usually run as root inside a container image, so the commands are emitted without sudo.
• The bundled fallback database now also covers igraph, rJava, jqr, odbc, av, rsvg, xslt, and protolite (40 curated packages in total).
• Installed-state detection now works on Alpine: missing_only filtering and the installed plan column use apk info when running on an apk platform.
• The startup message suggests setup_advice() with the detected platform instead of a hardcoded ubuntu-24.04 example when the current host is a supported Linux distribution.

Documentation

• The README, the FAQ, and the setup, fundamentals, and Docker vignettes now describe distribution-native binary repositories that resolve system dependencies automatically: r2u (Ubuntu), cran2copr (Fedora), CRAN2OBS (openSUSE), and the bspm bridge, with a pointer to Ucar and Eddelbuettel (2021, arXiv:2103.08069). setup_advice() mentions r2u on Ubuntu and credits the cran2copr project on Fedora. Suggested by Dirk Eddelbuettel (#1).

Bug fixes

• diagnose_log(), check_error(), and the other log-diagnosis helpers now report package names that match the platform's package manager. Previously the direct log patterns always suggested apt names, so Fedora users were told to run dnf install -y libxml2-dev instead of dnf install -y libxml2-devel. Mapped names on non-apt platforms carry a note asking the user to verify the exact name on their distribution.
• explain() no longer prints lines such as NA needs libxml2-dev. for diagnosis results that have no associated R package name; it now says libxml2-dev is needed. instead.
• The internal JSON writer no longer double-escapes newline, carriage return, and tab characters, and now escapes backspace, form feed, and the remaining control characters, so written JSON always parses back to the original strings.
• The internal JSON parser now validates \u escape sequences (rejecting truncated escapes) and decodes UTF-16 surrogate pairs, so characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane survive parsing. Unpaired surrogates are rejected.
• Generated shell commands, Dockerfile snippets, and CI snippets drop system package names that contain unexpected characters (with a warning) instead of pasting them into the command line.
• Posit Package Manager requirements that consist only of post-install commands (for example R CMD javareconf) now keep their row in the plan.
• When a Posit Package Manager query fails (for example with no network), the fallback no longer stops with "Bundled fallback data currently supports apt platforms only." on non-apt platforms. The bundled fallback now serves platform-matching names, and on platforms outside the bundled data (such as Homebrew) an empty plan is returned with the original error recorded in the fallback_error attribute.
• detect_platform() now reports Alpine hosts as supported, matching resolve_platform("alpine-3.20") and the documented platform list.
• Posit Package Manager queries now work from real Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, Red Hat, openSUSE Leap, and Ubuntu-derivative hosts. Package Manager keys on rockylinux 9, redhat 9, opensuse 15.6, and ubuntu 24.04, but /etc/os-release reports rocky 9.4, opensuse-leap 15.6, or linuxmint 22, so ppm_sysreqs(), check_ppm(), and ppm_repo() all failed with "Unsupported system" or "No Package Manager binary URL" on those machines. The detected distro and version are unchanged; only the Package Manager lookup maps them. Ubuntu derivatives (Linux Mint, Pop!_OS, elementary OS) now report the underlying Ubuntu release, taken from UBUNTU_CODENAME.
• resolve_platform() splits <distro>-<version> at the last dash, so "opensuse-leap-15.6" resolves to openSUSE Leap 15.6 instead of distro opensuse with version leap-15.6. The shorthand forms "opensuse-15.6", "centos-7", and "rockylinux-9.4" now find their Package Manager binary URL segment.
• resolve_platform("rhel9") and resolve_platform("rhel10") now describe Red Hat Enterprise Linux rather than Rocky Linux.
• diagnose_log() and check_error() recognize compilation failed for package and lazy loading failed for package lines, not only configuration failed for package, when extracting failed package names.
• detect_project_packages(), check_project(), and check_library() drop packages that ship with R (stats, utils, methods, and so on) instead of reporting them as unresolved.
• write_json() writes null for missing strings; previously NA values in columns such as sysreq were written as the string "NA".
• Installed-state detection on apt hosts ignores packages that were removed but not purged (dpkg state config-files), which dpkg-query -W lists alongside installed packages.
• The detect_platform() example now ships its fixture file (inst/extdata/os-release-fedora-40), so it runs instead of silently skipping.
• use_ppm() documentation no longer claims that scope selects which .Rprofile is edited; path is always required for writing, and the error message now suggests a scope-appropriate path.

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.