Rv

Dev tools

package manager

SHOW HN2025

76points
31comments
#944of 3,837 in 2025
Top 25%of 2025 by points

How HN took it

CuriousMostly questions and neutral comments

5 positive, 10 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 1 critical, out of 16 comments about the project. Thread score +0.17.

Idea: 3 for, 0 againstExecution: 1 for, 1 againstDesign: 1 for, 0 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Easy to use; more reliable than renv in small projects

    From 1 comment
    • Ok, this is really promising. I've always found renv to be slightly frustrating to use and it ends up breaking in mysterious ways after a time. rv was a joy to use in a small…
      rorylawless on HN
  • Useful .rv R console functions for non-CS users

    From 1 comment
    • Yes! Absolutely in the plans to have a corresponding R package. In the meantime, we've created a `.rv` R environment within rv projects that allow users to call things like…
      arbutus8 on HN

Objections

  • Rust rewrites of package managers questioned

    From 1 comment
    • is using Rust to rewrite existing package managers a new trendy thing feels we eagerly need cv -> C/C++ package manager
      xgstation on HN

Requests

  • R package wrapper exposing high-level commands

    From 1 comment
    • Very cool! Are you planning for there to be a corresponding R package that exposes the high level commands? The popularity of the usethis package really showed the power of…
      condwanaland on HN
  • Bioconductor installation support

    From 1 comment
  • Posit publishing manifest output

    From 1 comment
    • Looks interesting, I’m excited to give it a try. Is there any plan to have it create a manifest (like renv.lock) that can be used directly with the posit publishing system?
      j_bum on HN

Questions

  • Handling system-level dependencies

    From 1 comment
    • I'm curious — does rv support or plan to support per-project isolation of system-level dependencies (e.g., gfortran, libxml2, etc.) like what renv sometimes indirectly requires…
      badmonster on HN
  • Creating isolated R environments

    From 1 comment
    • Can this be used to effectively create R environments? I’m desperate for such a solution.
      mbeavitt on HN

Alternatives named

  • renv

    From 2 comments
    • Doesn’t renv do that? What need does renv not meet for you?
      scrappyjoe on HN
    • I had similar issues in the past. Setting up renv, everything seems good, but after working in a project for a few weeks and installing packages, renv constantly complains about…
      aquafox on HN
  • Nix or Guix

    From 2 comments
    • You can do that with Nix or Guix.
      goosedragons on HN
    • I'm curious how your team ended up doing this. We settled on Nix with flakes after some pain with Docker / RStudio Server.
      mauflows on HN
  • pixi

    From 1 comment
    • I used pixi for that. It uses Conda ecosystem but you get proper lockfiles and great native binary package support.
      okanat on HN
  • Posit Package Manager

    From 1 comment
    • Posit offers something similar to Microsoft’s CRAN Time Machine, but it works not only for CRAN, but also for Bioconductor and PyPI. You can add a date to the Public Posit…
      t-kalinowski on HN
  • groundhog

    From 1 comment
    • Might be worth looking at groundhog, if you want a 'time machine' less likely to have a commercial motive
      almostkindatech on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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