Short talk: Managing and running conda packages through R with the Herper package

Managing and running conda packages through R with the Herper package

Matt Paul,Doug Barrows,Tom Carroll The Rockefeller University

Abstract

Many tools for data analysis are not available in R, but are present in public repositories like conda. In this workshop we will demonstrate the Herper package and its comprehensive set of functions to interact with the conda package management system. With Herper users can install, manage and run conda packages from the comfort of their R session.

Furthermore, many R packages require the use of these external dependencies. As of September 2020 there were 169 such packages, with the external dependencies listed in their System Requirements. Herper provides an ad-hoc method for managing these dependencies, so you can get your analysis running as quickly and easily as possible.

In this workshop we will overview the various utilities of Herper, including setting up conda environments to work in, running R packages that depend on external tools and running external tools through R itself.

Keywords: Herper,conda,system requirements,package management