The fastverse is an extensible suite of R packages, developed independently by various people, that contribute to the objectives of:
The fastverse installs 4 core packages (data.table,
collapse, kit and magrittr)1 that are (by default)
attached with library(fastverse). These packages were
selected because they provide high quality compiled code for most common
statistical and data manipulation tasks, have carefully managed APIs,
jointly depend only on base R and Rcpp, and work remarkably
well together.
library(fastverse)
# -- Attaching packages --------------------------------------- fastverse 0.3.2 --
# v data.table 1.14.8 v kit 0.0.13
# v magrittr 2.0.3 v collapse 1.9.6.9500The fastverse package then provides functionality familiar from the tidyverse package, such as checking and reporting namespace clashes, and utilities for updating packages, listing dependencies etc…
# Checking for any updates
fastverse_update()
# The following packages are out of date:
#
# * kit (0.0.13 -> 0.0.14)
#
# Start a clean R session then run:
# install.packages("kit")A key feature of the fastverse is that it can be extended with other packages that can easily be loaded into the current session and then managed using the tools this package provides. Users are also encouraged to make of use the features described in the remainder of this vignette to permanently extend the fastverse or even create ‘verses’ of packages that suit their personal analysis needs. A selection of suggested packages is provided on the website2.
After the core packages have been attached with
library(fastverse), it is possible to extend the
fastverse for the current session by adding any number of
additional packages with fastverse_extend(). This will
attach the packages, displaying the package versions (useful for
replicability), and (by default) check for namespace clashes with
attached packages, as well as among the added packages.
# Extend the fastverse for the session
fastverse_extend(xts, roll, fasttime)
# -- Attaching extension packages ----------------------------- fastverse 0.3.2 --
# v xts 0.13.1 v fasttime 1.1.0
# v roll 1.1.6
# -- Conflicts ------------------------------------------ fastverse_conflicts() --
# x xts::first() masks data.table::first()
# x xts::last() masks data.table::last()
# See that these are now part of the fastverse
fastverse_packages()
# [1] "data.table" "magrittr" "kit" "collapse" "xts"
# [6] "roll" "fasttime" "fastverse"
# They are also saved in a like-named option
options("fastverse.extend")
# $fastverse.extend
# [1] "xts" "roll" "fasttime"All fastverse packages (or particular packages) can be
detached using fastverse_detach.
# Detaches all packages (including the fastverse) but does not (default) unload them
fastverse_detach()For programming purposes it is also possible to pass vectors of
packages to both fastverse_extend and
fastverse_detach3. The defaults of
fastverse_detach are set such that detaching is very
‘light’. Packages are not unloaded and all fastverse options
set for the session are kept.
# Extensions are still here ...
options("fastverse.extend")
# $fastverse.extend
# [1] "xts" "roll" "fasttime"
# Thus attaching the fastverse again will include them
library(fastverse)
# -- Attaching packages --------------------------------------- fastverse 0.3.2 --
# v data.table 1.14.8 v xts 0.13.1
# v magrittr 2.0.3 v roll 1.1.6
# v kit 0.0.13 v fasttime 1.1.0
# v collapse 1.9.6.9500
# -- Conflicts ------------------------------------------ fastverse_conflicts() --
# x xts::first() masks data.table::first()
# x xts::last() masks data.table::last()‘Harder’ modes of detaching can be achieved using arguments
unload = TRUE (and force = TRUE) to
(forcefully) detach and unload fastverse packages, and/or
session = TRUE which will clear all fastverse
options set4.
# Detaching and unloading all packages and clearing options
fastverse_detach(session = TRUE, unload = TRUE)fastverse_detach can also be used to detach any other
attached packages not part of the fastverse. It is recommended
to load all packages used in the current session through
fastverse_extend(), to display any conflicts when they are
loaded and be able to keep track of the search path with
fastverse_conflicts().
Since options("fastverse.extend") keeps track of which
packages were added to the fastverse for the current session,
it is also possible to set it before loading the fastverse
e.g.
fasvtverse_extend and fastverse_detach both
have an argument permanent = TRUE which can be used to make
these changes persist across R sessions. This is implemented using a
global configuration file saved to the package directory5.
For example, suppose most of my work involves time series analysis,
and I would like to add xts, zoo, anytime and
roll to my fastverse. Let’s say I also don’t really
need the switches and parallel statistics provided by the kit
package and I am completely happy with the base pipe so I don’t need
magrittr. Let’s finally say that I don’t want
xts::first and xts::last to mask
data.table::first and data.table::last.
Then I could permanently modify my fastverse as follows6:
library(fastverse)
# -- Attaching packages --------------------------------------- fastverse 0.3.2 --
# v data.table 1.14.8 v kit 0.0.13
# v magrittr 2.0.3 v collapse 1.9.6.9500
# Adding extensions
fastverse_extend(xts, zoo, roll, anytime, permanent = TRUE)
# -- Attaching extension packages ----------------------------- fastverse 0.3.2 --
# v xts 0.13.1 v anytime 0.3.9
# v roll 1.1.6
# -- Conflicts ------------------------------------------ fastverse_conflicts() --
# x zoo::as.Date() masks base::as.Date()
# x zoo::as.Date.numeric() masks base::as.Date.numeric()
# x xts::first() masks data.table::first()
# x xts::last() masks data.table::last()
# Removing some core packages
fastverse_detach(data.table, kit, magrittr, permanent = TRUE)
# Adding data.table again, so it is attached last
fastverse_extend(data.table, permanent = TRUE)
# -- Attaching extension packages ----------------------------- fastverse 0.3.2 --
# v data.table 1.14.8
# -- Conflicts ------------------------------------------ fastverse_conflicts() --
# x data.table::first() masks xts::first()
# x data.table::last() masks xts::last()To verify our modification, we can see the order in which the packages are attached, and do a conflict check:
# This will be the order in which packages are attached
fastverse_packages(include.self = FALSE)
# [1] "collapse" "xts" "zoo" "roll" "anytime"
# [6] "data.table"
# Check conflicts to make sure data.table functions take precedence
fastverse_conflicts()
# -- Conflicts ------------------------------------------ fastverse_conflicts() --
# x zoo::as.Date() masks base::as.Date()
# x zoo::as.Date.numeric() masks base::as.Date.numeric()
# x data.table::first() masks xts::first()
# x data.table::last() masks xts::last()Note that options("fastverse.extend") is still empty,
because we have written those changes to a config file7. Now lets see if our
permanent modification worked:
library(fastverse)
# -- Attaching packages --------------------------------------- fastverse 0.3.2 --
# v collapse 1.9.6.9500 v roll 1.1.6
# v xts 0.13.1 v anytime 0.3.9
# v zoo 1.8.12 v data.table 1.14.8
# -- Conflicts ------------------------------------------ fastverse_conflicts() --
# x zoo::as.Date() masks base::as.Date()
# x zoo::as.Date.numeric() masks base::as.Date.numeric()
# x data.table::first() masks xts::first()
# x data.table::last() masks xts::last()After this permanent modification, the fastverse can still be extend for the session:
# Extension for the session
fastverse_extend(Rfast, coop)
# -- Attaching extension packages ----------------------------- fastverse 0.3.2 --
# v Rfast 2.0.8 v coop 0.6.3
# -- Conflicts ------------------------------------------ fastverse_conflicts() --
# x Rfast::group() masks collapse::group()
# x Rfast::transpose() masks data.table::transpose()
# These packages go here
options("fastverse.extend")
# $fastverse.extend
# [1] "Rfast" "coop"
# This fetches packages from both the file and the option
fastverse_packages()
# [1] "collapse" "xts" "zoo" "roll" "anytime"
# [6] "data.table" "Rfast" "coop" "fastverse"As long as the current installation of the fastverse is kept, these modifications will persist across R sessions. Needless to say this is not ideal as reinstallation of the fastverse will remove the config file. Therefore, the fastverse also offers a persistent and more flexible mechanism to configure it inside projects.
You can put together a custom collection of packages for a project,
and load / manage them with library(fastverse).
For this you need to include a configuration file named
.fastverse (no file extension) inside a project directory,
and place inside that file the names of packages to be loaded when
calling library(fastverse)8. Note that
all packages to be loaded as core fastverse
for your project need to be included in that file, in the order they
should be attached.
In addition, you can set global options and environment variables,
either before or after the list of packages. Options must be prefixed
with _opt_ and environment variables with
_env_, and either must be placed on separate lines. For
example, including a .fastverse script like this
_opt_collapse_mask = c("manip", "helper")
_opt_fastverse.install = TRUE
data.table, kit, magrittr, collapse, qs, fixest,
ranger, robustbase, decompr
_opt_max.print = 100
_opt_kit.nThread = 4
_env_NCRAN = TRUEin a project directory, and placing library(fastverse)
at the top of an R script in the project will first set
options(collapse_mask = c("manip", "helper), fastverse.install = TRUE)9, then
attach all the packages in the order provided, and then set
options(max.print = 100, kit.nThread = 4) and
Sys.setenv(NCRAN = TRUE). Note that packages can be spread
across multiple lines, but need to be together i.e. they cannot be
separated by options. Alternatively you can also use an
.Rprofile file and set fastverse options such as
options(fastverse.extend = c(...packages...)) there. The
advantage of .fastverse files is that you can specify
options to be loaded before or after the loading of packages through
library(fastverse)10, and you can also prevent core packages
from being loaded by excluding them from the .fastverse
file.
Using the fastverse to jointly load important packages and set important options can facilitate package management inside projects and serve as a bridge between loading packages individually and using more rigorous package and namespace management solutions such as renv, conflicted, box or import.
At the most basic level, loading packages with the fastverse
displays the package versions and checks namespace conflicts, helping
you spot issues that might arise as packages are updated. It also allows
you to easily check the dependencies and update status of packages used
in your project with fastverse_sitrep(), and update if
necessary with fastverse_update().
Using a config file in a project will ignore any global configuration
as discussed in the previous section. You can still extend the
fastverse inside a project session using
fastverse_extend (or
options(fastvers.extend = c(...packages...)) before
library(fastverse)).
At last, you can also create wholly separate and fully customizable
verses - with the fastverse_child() function. Let’s say I
would like to create a verse for time series analysis that I want to
keep separate from the fastverse. This is easily done using
e.g.
fastverse_child(
name = "tsverse",
title = "Time Series Package Verse",
pkg = c("xts", "roll", "zoo", "tsbox", "urca", "tseries", "tsutils", "forecast"),
maintainer = 'person("GivenName", "FamilyName", role = "cre", email = "your@email.com")',
dir = "C:/Users/.../Documents",
theme = "tidyverse")By default (install = TRUE,
keep.dir = TRUE) the package is installed and a source
directory is created under dir/name, allowing further edits to the
package. Such fastverse children inherit 90% of the
functionality of the fastverse package: they are not
permanently globally extensible and can not bear children themselves,
but can be configured for projects (using, in this case, a
.tsverse config file and options starting with ‘tsverse’)
and extended in the session. The function uses a prepared ‘child’ branch
of the GitHub
repository, and thus does not require any further packages such as
devtools.
Just like it’s tidyverse equivalent,
fastverse_deps() (recursively) determines the joint
dependencies of fastverse packages and also checks local
versions against CRAN versions.
# Recursively determine the joint dependencies of the current fastverse configuration
fastverse_deps(recursive = TRUE) # Returns a data frame
# package repos local behind
# 1 collapse 1.9.6 1.9.6.9500 FALSE
# 2 xts 0.13.1 0.13.1 FALSE
# 3 zoo 1.8.12 1.8.12 FALSE
# 4 roll 1.1.6 1.1.6 FALSE
# 5 anytime 0.3.9 0.3.9 FALSE
# 6 data.table 1.14.8 1.14.8 FALSE
# 7 Rfast 2.0.8 2.0.8 FALSE
# 8 coop 0.6.3 0.6.3 FALSE
# 9 BH 1.81.0.1 1.81.0.1 FALSE
# 10 Rcpp 1.0.11 1.0.11 FALSE
# 11 RcppArmadillo 0.12.6.4.0 0.12.2.0.0 TRUE
# 12 RcppGSL 0.3.13 0.3.13 FALSE
# 13 RcppParallel 5.1.7 5.1.7 FALSE
# 14 RcppZiggurat 0.1.6 0.1.6 FALSE
# 15 lattice 0.21.8 0.21.8 FALSEAdditional flexibility is offered by the pkg argument
allowing dependency and update status checks for any other packages.
fastverse_sitrep() displays the same information in a more
elegant printout, also showing the version of R, and whether any global
or project-level configuration files - as discussed in previous sections
- are used.
# Check versions and update status of packages and dependencies
fastverse_sitrep() # default is recursive = FALSE
# -- fastverse 0.3.2: Situation Report -------------------------------- R 4.3.0 --
# * Global config file: TRUE
# * Project config file: FALSE
# -- Core packages ---------------------------------------------------------------
# * collapse (1.9.6.9500)
# * xts (0.13.1)
# * zoo (1.8.12)
# * roll (1.1.6)
# * anytime (0.3.9)
# * data.table (1.14.8)
# -- Extension packages ----------------------------------------------------------
# * Rfast (2.0.8)
# * coop (0.6.3)
# -- Dependencies ----------------------------------------------------------------
# * BH (1.81.0.1)
# * Rcpp (1.0.11)
# * RcppArmadillo (0.12.2.0.0 < 0.12.6.4.0)
# * RcppParallel (5.1.7)
# * RcppZiggurat (0.1.6)
# * lattice (0.21.8)fastverse_update() can be used to (default) print an
install.packages() statement to update fastverse
packages and dependencies, or to install updates straight away
(install = TRUE). In all three functions,
check.deps = FALSE can be specified to exclude dependencies
of fastverse packages, recursive = TRUE can be
used to check all dependencies, and include.self = TRUE can
be used to also check for updates of the fastverse package
itself.
The development versions of all core and suggested fastverse
packages are also collected on an r-universe server at https://fastverse.r-universe.dev. Mac/Windows binaries
are built on this server within 24h after a change to the main branch of
the GitHub repository. Since v0.3.0 the package exports a global macro
.fastverse_repos which contains the URL of this repository
alongside the CRAN repository URL (needed for non-fastverse
dependencies). Functions fastverse_deps(),
fastverse_update(), fastverse_install() and
fastverse_siteep() have a repos argument which
defaults to getOption("repos") (CRAN), but users can set
repos = .fastverse_repos to check against / update /
install development versions of fastverse packages from
r-universe.
# Check development versions on GitHub / r-universe, and install them if desired.
fastverse_update(repos = .fastverse_repos)
# The following packages are out of date:
#
# * xts (0.13.1 -> 0.13.1.2)
# * roll (1.1.6 -> 1.1.7)
# * anytime (0.3.9 -> 0.3.9.5)
# * data.table (1.14.8 -> 1.14.9)
# * Rcpp (1.0.11 -> 1.0.11.2)
# * RcppArmadillo (0.12.2.0.0 -> 0.12.6.4.0)
#
# Start a clean R session then run:
# install.packages(c("xts", "roll", "anytime", "data.table", "Rcpp", "RcppArmadillo"
# ), repos = c(fastverse = "https://fastverse.r-universe.dev", CRAN = "https://cloud.r-project.org"))Apart from "fastverse.extend", the fastverse
also has options "fastverse.install",
"fastverse.styling" and "fastverse.quiet".
Setting options(fastverse.install = TRUE) before
library(fastverse) will make sure any packages missing on
your system will be installed beforehand. This can also be done ex-post
using the fastverse_install() function. Setting
options(fastverse.styling = FALSE) will disable coloured
text printed to the R console (as done for this vignette).
options(fastverse.quiet = TRUE) will omit any messages
printed from library(fastverse) and
fastverse_extend() or fastverse_install():
fastverse_detach()
options(fastverse.quiet = TRUE)
library(fastverse) # Nothing to see here
# This gives lots of function clashes with data.table, but they are not displayed in quiet mode
fastverse_extend(lubridate)If you only want to omit a function clash check when calling
fastverse_extend, you can also use
fastverse_extend(..., check.conflicts = FALSE).
The fastverse was developed principally for 2 reasons: to promote quality high-performance software development for R, and to provide a flexible approach to package loading and management in R, particularly for users wishing to combine various high-performance packages in statistical workflows. To the extent that high-performance software development in R continues to prioritize low-dependency and stable APIs, complex statistical and project workflows can be developed without sophisticated package management solutions.
data.table, collapse and kit support
OpenMP multithreading on all platforms. Global defaults can be set using
data.table::setDTthreads(),
collapse::set_collapse(nthreads = ...) and
options(kit.nThread = ...). Users should be careful with
running multithreaded collapse and kit functions
inside data.table. I have created a small video tutorial
for collapse where I talk more about this amongst other
things.
Note also that on macOS, OpenMP is disabled in binaries installed
from CRAN. To enable OpenMP on macOS, users first need to install OpenMP
and do some configuration. See here for instructions and
the latest OpenMP releases. I have also compactly written the terminal
commands you need to run in the description of the tutorial. After
installing OpenMP and configuring your R-session, install the packages
from source or use r-universe binaries. An easy way would be to run
fastverse_install(data.table, collapse, kit, only.missing = FALSE, repos = .fastverse_repos).
Before v0.3.0 matrixStats and fst were past of the core fastverse, but were removed following a poll on Twitter in November 2022 where more than 50% voted in favor of removing them from the core fastverse.↩︎
Let me know about other packages you think should be featured there.↩︎
In particular, the ... expression is first
captured using substitute(c(...)), and then evaluated
inside tryCatch. If this evaluation fails or did not result
in a character vector, the expression is coerced to character.↩︎
options("fastverse.quiet") and
options("fastverse.styling") will only be cleared if all
packages are detached. If selected packages are detached, they are
removed from options("fastverse.extend").↩︎
Thus it will be removed when the fastverse is reinstalled.↩︎
I note that namespace conflicts can also be detected and handled with the conflicted package on CRAN.↩︎
When fetching the names of fastverse packages,
fastverse_packages first checks any config file and then
checks options("fastverse.extend").↩︎
You can place package names in that file any manner you deem suitable: separated using spaces or commas, on one or multiple lines. Note that the file will be read from left to right and from top to bottom. Packages are attached in the order found in the file.↩︎
Setting options(fastverse.install = TRUE)
before loading the packages will make sure any packages missing on your
system will be installed beforehand.
options(collapse_mask = ...) can be used to make base R and
dplyr functions with faster versions provided in the collapse
package. See help("collapse-options").↩︎
This may be useful if packages set certain options when being loaded, overwriting any prior settings, or if options affect the way packages are loaded and should better be set after they are loaded.↩︎