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Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

bigbang 0.4.0

New features

  • The project lifecycle is now documented as stable: its public API has remained stable since 0.1.0 and is protected by an extensive regression suite and repeated independent adversarial reviews.

  • create_metapackage(reexport = TRUE) now exposes explicit component exports through lazy, read-only active bindings without making components installation dependencies. Generated metapackages can load offline before their components are installed, and the bindings resolve after a later installation.

  • Runtime re-exports now exclude S4 class and method directives, reserve every generated helper symbol, preserve untracked reexports.R and reexports.Rd files during updates, avoid loading components for startup reporting, and support installation into a new library directory.

  • Component inputs now accept a bare package name when exactly one archive in the supplied directories declares that Package identity. Ambiguous versions or sources are rejected with the full candidate list.

Documentation

  • The acknowledgments now use Richard Detomasi’s current contact and profile, retain the precise credit for the initial metapackage-builder suggestion, and identify pegeler/metapackage as a related online declarative metapackage.

Bug fixes

  • Bare package-name discovery now warns when an unreadable archive is excluded and suppresses uncontrolled tar diagnostics while retaining readable matches.

  • Runtime re-exports quote non-syntactic names in generated NAMESPACE files, so legal exports containing spaces or Unicode characters produce installable metapackages and working active bindings.

  • removed_files now includes partial documentation outputs that a generation call created and cleaned up after roxygen failed. Dry-run plans continue to report only removals that are knowable before generation starts.

bigbang 0.3.0

This release makes the package accept component packages as an organisation actually keeps them, instead of requiring one directory, one archive extension, and a version in every filename. Package identity now comes from each archive’s DESCRIPTION rather than its filename, generation can report a plan without writing anything, and the checks that concern project tidiness can be relaxed individually. The checks that protect whoever installs the generated meta-package cannot: they remain hard errors during generation.

It also supersedes 0.2.0, which was prepared and verified but never submitted. Everything listed under 0.2.0 below reaches CRAN for the first time here, so a user updating from 0.1.0 should read both sections.

Breaking changes

  • reexport is deprecated and ignored. Generated metapackages attach installed components, so their exports remain available directly or through each component namespace, but they are not copied into the metapackage namespace. Re-exporting would require declaring components as installation-time dependencies, which conflicts with explicit offline component installation; the option did not produce a valid package in the published 0.1.0 release.

Component archives can come from anywhere

  • Any element of packages that is an existing file is used as a path, so components can come from several directories in one call and mix .tar.gz, .tar and .zip. Stems still work, resolved against pkg_dir, which now accepts more than one directory.
  • Package identity and version come from each archive’s DESCRIPTION, not from its filename, so a filename without a version is valid. A filename that disagrees with the DESCRIPTION produces a warning and the DESCRIPTION wins.
  • A component may be a source directory with a DESCRIPTION at its root, built for you with the optional pkgbuild package. It requires include_archives = TRUE, because the archive built for it lives in a temporary directory that does not outlive the call.
  • packages may be the path to a manifest: one component per line, # for comments. Relative paths resolve against the manifest’s own directory, absolute and ~ paths are used as given, and bare filenames are also looked up in pkg_dir, so the list can live under version control while the archives do not. A missing entry reports every directory that was searched.

Seeing what a call would do before it does it

  • create_metapackage(dry_run = TRUE) resolves and validates everything and returns the plan — components, installation order, files that would be written, and every validation finding — without creating dest_dir or writing anything.

Strictness you choose, within limits you do not

  • create_metapackage() gains a final tolerate argument taking a closed list of named relaxations: "filename_mismatch" silences the filename-versus- DESCRIPTION warning, and "unincluded_local_dep" turns the error for a local dependency available in the supplied sources but omitted from packages into a warning. That second relaxation means the dependency does not travel, so the recipient has to supply it. Unknown names are errors, not silent no-ops.
  • Generation results include a tolerated table naming every applied relaxation, the component it affected, and why.
  • on_component_error = "skip" generates from the components that are valid instead of aborting, and reports the ones it left out. The exclusion is transitive: a component that depends on an excluded one is excluded too, and the chain is reported. When the omitted archive can be read, its declared Package drives the exclusion; when it cannot, the filename fallback is reported explicitly. Excluding every component is an error.
  • The documentation now separates the two classes of check: validations that protect whoever installs the generated meta-package cannot be disabled by any value of tolerate, and there is no switch that turns validation off as a whole. It also states explicitly that bigbang does not run R CMD check on component packages, so a component with check warnings or notes can be included.

Regenerating in place

  • create_metapackage(update = TRUE) regenerates an existing project, which relaxes the rule that a destination must be new or empty. Generation records a manifest of the files it wrote together with their content hashes; update rewrites only those, and refuses to run if the manifest is missing or if a generated file was modified or removed by hand.
  • Files bigbang did not write are never touched. update refuses when a generated file, or any parent directory on the way to it, is a symbolic link, and it replaces generated files and shipped archives atomically, so a regeneration cannot write outside the project tree.
  • When components or options are dropped, update reconciles: generated files and shipped component archives that the new plan no longer includes are removed transactionally, so the regenerated meta-package cannot end up importing from a component it no longer declares. Before changing an existing project, bigbang backs up all generated files and its manifest. If generation or reconciliation fails, that state is restored and the update remains retryable. Dry runs and completed updates report the affected paths in removed_files; removing a component may remove the last available copy of its shipped archive.

Generated installers

  • <meta>_install(only = ...) installs a subset; local dependencies of the selection are added automatically, and an unknown component name is an error.
  • <meta>_install(lib = ...) chooses the library in which components must be installed and verified. Non-local dependencies may already be available in that library or anywhere on .libPaths(); they no longer need to be duplicated into the component destination.
  • create_metapackage(install_upgrade = ...) fixes the default upgrade policy of the installer that gets emitted, so the person generating decides whether recipients stay pinned to the versions being shipped or keep anything newer they already have. The default is unchanged.
  • The installer accepts a vector of archive directories when the archives are not shipped, and archives that do travel inside a generated meta-package contain no path from the machine that produced them.
  • Real generation results now include the same topological order field as dry-run plans. The planned files field remains specific to dry runs.
  • When installing a source component fails, install_local_pkg() and generated installers now report the error lines of the installation subprocess itself – for example, which dependency it could not find – instead of only a generic verification failure.

Bug fixes

  • A failed documentation run during update = TRUE no longer deletes or leaves partially overwritten an untracked Rd file whose name is reserved for generated documentation. Such files are backed up before roxygen runs and restored without being adopted into the generation manifest.
  • Migrating a development-era schema 1 generation manifest now adopts only the shipped component archives that belong to the current plan. An unrelated archive placed by the user under inst/archives/ remains untracked and is never removed by a later update.
  • Documentation outputs can be disabled and re-enabled across updates. If roxygen fails during an update, previously tracked Rd files are restored and retained in the manifest, while partial newly generated Rd files are removed, so a later documentation update remains possible.
  • Update manifests are now built from the explicit generation plan instead of scanning the project tree. Repeated updates no longer absorb and later delete user files, including files under .git/.
  • With on_component_error = "skip", a failed update input no longer authorizes deletion of a previously shipped component archive. If the old component cannot be identified safely, archive reconciliation is deferred until a clean update.
  • Updates now reject a generated project whose root entry is itself a symbolic link, in addition to links below the project root.
  • Successful source-install transcripts now honor verbose = FALSE in both install_local_pkg() and generated installers; failure details still retain the child process’s ERROR lines.
  • install_local_pkg(lib = ...) and generated installers now distinguish the component destination from the dependency search path: a component present only elsewhere is installed into lib, while a non-local dependency already available elsewhere on .libPaths() is reused. This also works under the dependency isolation used by R CMD check on Windows.
  • A component archive with an upper-case extension — PKG_1.0.TAR.GZ, as they often arrive from Windows — was shipped under its original name while the generated installer looked for the normalised one. The component was never installed on a case-sensitive filesystem, with no error anywhere. Archives are now copied under canonical names, and names that collide only by case are rejected.
  • An unreadable archive unrelated to the requested components, left in a supplied source directory, aborted generation. Such archives are now excluded from the inventory with a warning, and there is a specific diagnostic when a declared dependency appears to match one.
  • Installing a package that is already present no longer requires reading its archive when upgrade = "never"; under the default policy only the archive’s DESCRIPTION is read before deciding whether the archive is needed at all. An unreadable archive is reported as unchanged when the installed package can be kept, instead of failing the call.
  • A failed resolution of several components kept only a placeholder name in the installation result; the requested names are retained.
  • Installation messages name both the package declared by the DESCRIPTION and the archive it came from when the two differ, instead of reporting the filename as though it were the package.
  • Reading an archive’s version for the installation shortcut now rejects extracted symbolic links before reading metadata, matching the guarantees of the full archive validation path.
  • Rolling back a generation that failed after the project tree existed is now exercised, including destinations reached through a symbolic link and a removal that does not succeed.

Documentation

  • The installation help explains that under upgrade = "never" the component is identified from its filename, because the archive is deliberately not read; use the default policy when the declared Package has to be checked against what is installed.
  • The README, in both languages, documents where components can come from and every generation option. It previously described the input model the package had before this release.

bigbang 0.2.0

Prepared and verified but never submitted: CRAN submissions were closed between 2026-08-05 and 2026-08-19. These changes are released as part of 0.3.0.

Breaking changes

  • The deprecated Spanish aliases crear_meta_paquete_local(), diagnosticar_dependencias() and install_loc_pkg_w_dep() were removed. They existed to ease a rename inside the organisation the package grew in, while it was still unpublished. Use create_metapackage(), diagnose_dependencies() and install_local_pkg().
  • In a generated meta-package built with include_archives = FALSE, <meta>_install() requires pkg_dir. In 0.1.0 that argument defaulted to the absolute archive path of the machine where the meta-package had been generated, which exists nowhere else. With the new default, include_archives = TRUE, the argument is optional again because the archives travel inside the package.
  • Components that the installation policy left untouched are reported in a new unchanged element of the installation result instead of appearing in installed labelled “Already installed”. Reporting a package as installed when nothing was installed was misleading.
  • Non-local dependencies are installed with dependencies = NA instead of TRUE, so their Suggests are no longer installed. Everything a component needs in order to run is still installed; what is no longer pulled in is the tooling those dependencies use for their own examples, tests and vignettes.
  • Source-code guesses from detect_implicit_dependencies() are now diagnostic only. Dependencies declared by a component, or supplied explicitly through additional_deps/force_deps, remain binding; guessed packages must be opted in explicitly. This prevents comments and common function names from making a distributed meta-package depend on unrelated packages.
  • Generation now rejects a local dependency constraint that the included archive cannot satisfy, and rejects a local archive that is present in pkg_dir but was not included in packages. Component R version requirements are propagated to the generated DESCRIPTION for enforcement on the recipient’s R version.
  • The arguments added in this release come last in every signature, so a positional call written against 0.1.0 keeps binding to the same parameters. Positional calls are still a fragile way to call these functions: name the arguments.

Generated meta-packages are self-contained

  • create_metapackage() gained include_archives, TRUE by default, which copies the component archives into inst/archives/ of the generated meta-package. Its installer then defaults pkg_dir to system.file("archives", package = "<meta>"), resolved when the installer is called, so the meta-package is the only artifact that has to be distributed and its components install with no arguments, with no path agreed on beforehand. Network access remains necessary only for components that depend on a package coming from a repository. Pass include_archives = FALSE to keep the archives in a shared location the recipient can reach.
  • The build ignore rules of a generated meta-package exempt inst/archives/, so shipped components reach the tarball while every other archive anywhere in the tree is still excluded.

New features

  • Generated meta-packages provide an optional cli two-column startup message that falls back to the ASCII banner when cli is absent, a <meta>.quiet option, <meta>_conflicts() for masking conflicts, explicit reinstall and upgrade policies (force, and upgrade = "newer" | "always" | "never"), and an optional ordered workflow vignette through the workflow argument.
  • Generated metadata records the component list in Config/bigbang/packages, and the generated package tests that the list agrees with what it exports.

Bug fixes

  • Rollback of a failed generation works when a component of the destination path is a symbolic link. The project path was normalised before the directory existed and therefore left unresolved, while the path it was compared against was normalised after creation and resolved, so the two never matched and the rollback declined silently. That is the situation on macOS, where tempdir() sits under /var, itself a link to /private/var. Both sides are now normalised at the same moment.
  • An archive whose root directory is accompanied by an AppleDouble ._<dir> member is accepted. Archiving a package directory on macOS with extended attributes emits one, and R installs such an archive, so rejecting it rejected a working package.
  • diagnose_dependencies() extracts through the same guarded path as generation. A component carrying a symbolic link made the scanner read a file outside the archive and return its contents in the result.
  • Generation no longer changes the process working directory; every scaffold writer receives an explicit absolute path.
  • Fixed generation with relative dest_dir and pkg_dir paths, and roll back incomplete project trees created by a failed invocation.
  • create_metapackage() validates name before writing anything: against the R package name grammar, and against the names R itself ships. A name carrying a path separator or a parent reference previously placed the generated tree outside dest_dir and still reported success.
  • Non-local dependencies are installed with dependencies = NA, which covers Depends, Imports and LinkingTo, instead of TRUE, which also covered Suggests. Asking for one small dependency used to pull development tooling and its whole tree into the library.
  • Restored the caller’s attached packages and loaded namespaces after automatic documentation, and report documentation success accurately.
  • Fixed eleven Spanish runtime messages whose catalog keys had leading or trailing whitespace.
  • Generated helper examples use the requested meta-package name instead of an internal historical name.
  • Paths returned in results use forward slashes on every platform, like the rest of the package. On Windows result$path came back in the platform convention and therefore did not compare equal to a path the caller had built with file.path(). The containment checks normalise both sides the same way, so a destination that does not exist yet cannot be compared against one that does in a different convention.
  • When a component is skipped because a non-local dependency is missing, the warning names the call that resolves it and the attachment step no longer follows it with a vaguer hint suggesting a bare re-run, which would have skipped the component again for the same reason.
  • Component archive Package and Version fields are validated against their filenames, duplicate component versions and archive basenames are rejected while generating, and generated installers verify the declared version.
  • Already-installed messages now report the installed version rather than the version named by the archive.
  • Component names matching standard R package paths no longer generate .Rbuildignore rules that could exclude the generated package’s own files or shipped archives.
  • Already-installed messages show both the installed and archive versions, and explicitly flag when the installed version is newer. The unchanged element of an installation result now carries the same two versions instead of the label “Already installed”, which is untrue when the installed package only shares a component’s name; the result is the only thing a calling script can inspect.
  • Archive inspection now validates extraction status, member paths, symbolic links, and the single package root before accepting an archive. Nested tests/DESCRIPTION files are allowed, while a missing root DESCRIPTION is reported clearly.
  • Malformed component R files produce a warning naming the component archive and the path inside it, while generation continues, so a possible encoding issue is diagnosable without turning generation into an unconditional rejection. The warning no longer names the extraction directory, a temporary that no longer exists by the time the warning is read.
  • Rollback removes an empty destination directory created by the failed call, and safe_unlink() uses temporary-directory containment rather than a broad basename heuristic.
  • The source-code patterns require a namespace qualifier or a call for every package they guess at, so ordinary S4 code is no longer reported as needing Matrix, and an identifier beginning with st_ no longer suggests sf.

Documentation

  • The maintainer’s given name is spelled Sebastián, and the author entry now carries an ORCID identifier.

  • Documented that distributing the component archives inside a meta-package is a redistribution, so their licenses have to allow it, and that a component still installs only where its format can.

  • Documented related meta-package projects and design precedents.

  • Added the r-universe version badge and the one-line install from the universe binaries.

bigbang 0.1.0

CRAN release: 2026-08-08

First release on CRAN, accepted on 2026-08-08.

bigbang — create custom R metapackages from local packages

Data-safety architecture

  • Removed all generated startup installation and cwd-relative cleanup. Generated .onLoad() hooks are side-effect free; component installation is explicit via <meta>_install().
  • Added destructive regression tests in disposable directories, including real source installation, attachment, data-only components, names beginning with tmp, and content hashes for decoy directories.
  • Added scan_bigbang_artifact() to identify the historical V1/V2/V3/V7 signatures in source trees, archives, and installed packages without loading them.
  • Generated projects must use a new or empty destination, preventing unsafe in-place regeneration of unclassified historical sources.

Installation and portability

  • Component archives are installed once in topological dependency order; cycles raise a typed bigbang_error_cycle condition.
  • Added explicit offline dependency policies (skip, error, install) and content-based distinction between source ZIPs and Windows binary ZIPs.
  • All generated text is written as UTF-8, R literals and paths are emitted safely, and CI covers Linux, Windows, and macOS configurations.

API, language, and documentation

  • Added the English snake_case API: create_metapackage(), install_local_pkg(), and diagnose_dependencies(). Spanish aliases remain available as deprecated transition wrappers.
  • Added typed results and conditions with print methods.
  • English is the source language. Spanish runtime translations are supplied through gettext for both bigbang and generated metapackages.
  • Added English and Spanish guides, release documentation, and a pkgdown configuration.