Build a Dependency Tree for an R Package — build_dependency

This function constructs a nested list representing the dependency tree of a specified R package. The recursion stops at the specified maximum depth level (default: 3) or until a base package is reached.

Usage

build_dependency_tree(
  package_name,
  level = 1,
  get_license = FALSE,
  max_level = 3
)

Arguments

package_name: A character string specifying the name of the package.
level: An integer indicating the current recursion depth (default: 1).
get_license: A logical value indicating whether to extract and include license information from DESCRIPTION files (default: `FALSE`).
max_level: An integer specifying the maximum depth level for dependency recursion (default: 3). Set to a higher value to explore deeper dependency layers.

Value

A nested list representing the dependency tree, where base packages are marked as "base". If `get_license` is `TRUE`, each package entry in the tree includes a `license` field containing that specific package's license (extracted from its DESCRIPTION file). Each package's license is independent - the license of a parent package does not imply the licenses of its dependencies.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
build_dependency_tree("ggplot2")
build_dependency_tree("ggplot2", get_license = TRUE)
build_dependency_tree("ggplot2", max_level = 5)  # Deeper dependency exploration
} # }