Analyze R Packages Using PageRank Algorithm

Inspired by Antonio Piccolboni

#devtools::install_github('RevolutionAnalytics/miniCRAN')
library(miniCRAN)
library(igraph)
library(magrittr)

Download matrix of available packages at specific date

MRAN <- "http://mran.revolutionanalytics.com/snapshot/2017-02-01/"
pdb <- MRAN %>%
  contrib.url(type = "source") %>%
  available.packages(type="source", filters = NULL)

Use miniCRAN to build a graph of package dependencies.

Note that this step takes a while, expect ~15-30 seconds.

g <- pdb[, "Package"] %>%
  makeDepGraph(availPkgs = pdb, suggests=FALSE, enhances=TRUE, includeBasePkgs = FALSE)

Use the page.rank algorithm in igraph and display Top 20 results.

pr <- g %>%
  page.rank(directed = FALSE) %>%
  use_series("vector") %>%
  sort(decreasing = TRUE) %>%
  as.matrix %>%
  set_colnames("page.rank")
pr2 <- as.data.frame(pr)
pr2

Build dependency graph of top packages

set.seed(42)
pr2 %>%
  head(25) %>%
  rownames %>%
  makeDepGraph(pdb) %>%
  plot(main="Top packages by page rank", cex=0.5, width=120)