CRAN Task Views

CRAN task views aim to provide some guidance which packages on the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) are relevant for tasks related to a certain topic. They give a brief overview of the included packages which can also be automatically installed using the ctv package. The views are intended to have a sharp focus so that it is sufficiently clear which packages should be included (or excluded) - and they are not meant to endorse the “best” packages for a given task.

To automatically install the views, the ctv package needs to be installed, e.g., via

install.packages("ctv")

and then the views can be installed via install.views() or update.views() (where the latter only installs those packages which are not installed and up-to-date), e.g.,

ctv::install.views("Econometrics")
ctv::update.views("Econometrics")

To query information about a particular task view on CRAN from within R or to obtain the list of all task views available, respectively, the following commands are provided:

ctv::ctv("Econometrics")
ctv::available.views()

The task views as a whole are overseen and coordinated by the CRAN Task View Editors and each individual task view is maintained by a group of volunteers. See the repository of the CRAN Task View Initiative for details on how to contribute to an existing task view or propose a new one.