pak

pak is an R package installer that supports multiple sources including CRAN, Bioconductor, GitHub, git repositories, URLs, and local files. It serves as an alternative to install.packages() and devtools::install_github().

pak offers three main advantages: speed through parallel downloads and caching, safety via dependency solving and system requirement management, and convenience by supporting packages from multiple sources in a single interface. It includes tools for visualizing dependency trees and explaining why specific dependencies are required, making it easier to understand and manage package installations.