CRAN volunteers document since ~2009 why they archive packages. This function retrieves the data and prepares it for analysis, classifying the actions taken by the team per package and date.
Details
The comments are slightly edited: multiple comments for the same action are joined together so that they can be displayed on a single line. Actions are inferred from 7 keywords: archived, orphaned, removed, renamed, replaced, unarchived, unorphaned.
Note
There can be room for improvement: some comments describe two actions, please let me know if you think this can be improved. Other actions can be described on multiple comments/lines or out of order. Compare with the original file in case of doubts.
References
Original file: https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/PACKAGES.in
Examples
# \donttest{
cc <- cran_comments()
#> Retrieving comments, this might take a bit.
#> Caching results to be faster next call in this session.
head(cc)
#> package
#> 1 A3
#> 2 ABCExtremes
#> 3 ABCp2
#> 4 ABCp2
#> 5 ACCLMA
#> 6 ACD
#> comment
#> 1 Archived on 2025-06-13 as issues were not corrected despite reminders.
#> 2 Archived on 2015-06-19 as incomplete maintainer address was not corrected despite reminders.
#> 3 Archived on 2015-07-01 as maintainer address <duryea@dartmouth.edu> bounced.
#> 4 Archived on 2025-01-26 as issues were not corrected despite reminders.
#> 5 Archived on 2021-02-05 as issues were not corrected despite reminders: 'xtfrm()' on data frames.
#> 6 Archived on 2022-06-08 as check problems were not corrected despite reminders.
#> date action
#> 1 2025-06-13 archived
#> 2 2015-06-19 archived
#> 3 2015-07-01 archived
#> 4 2025-01-26 archived
#> 5 2021-02-05 archived
#> 6 2022-06-08 archived
# }