The R Journal: article published in 2020, volume 12:1

The Rockerverse: Packages and Applications for Containerisation with R
Daniel Nüst, Dirk Eddelbuettel, Dom Bennett, Robrecht Cannoodt, Dav Clark, Gergely Daróczi, Mark Edmondson, Colin Fay, Ellis Hughes, Lars Kjeldgaard, Sean Lopp, Ben Marwick, Heather Nolis, Jacqueline Nolis, Hong Ooi, Karthik Ram, Noam Ross, Lori Shepherd, Péter Sólymos, Tyson Lee Swetnam, Nitesh Turaga, Charlotte Van Petegem, Jason Williams, Craig Willis and Nan Xiao , The R Journal (2020) 12:1, pages 437-461.

Abstract The Rocker Project provides widely used Docker images for R across different application scenarios. This article surveys downstream projects that build upon the Rocker Project images and presents the current state of R packages for managing Docker images and controlling containers. These use cases cover diverse topics such as package development, reproducible research, collaborative work, cloud-based data processing, and production deployment of services. The variety of applications demonstrates the power of the Rocker Project specifically and containerisation in general. Across the diverse ways to use containers, we identified common themes: reproducible environments, scalability and efficiency, and portability across clouds. We conclude that the current growth and diversification of use cases is likely to continue its positive impact, but see the need for consolidating the Rockerverse ecosystem of packages, developing common practices for applications, and exploring alternative containerisation software.

Received: 2020-04-30; online 2020-09-10
CRAN packages: sys, stevedore, AzureContainers, googleCloudRunner, babelwhale, BiocManager, reticulate, Shiny, dockerfiler, dockr, liftr, checkpoint, renv, sf, rgdal, sanitizers, RSelenium, batchtools, googleComputeEngineR, future, plumber, drake, golem, analogsea, Rserve, svSocket, keras, DBI, dbplyr, dplyr, testthat, tinytest, ttdo, diffobj
CRAN Task Views implied by cited CRAN packages: ModelDeployment, WebTechnologies, HighPerformanceComputing, ReproducibleResearch, Databases, NumericalMathematics, Spatial, SpatioTemporal

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

@article{RJ-2020-007,
  author = {Daniel Nüst and Dirk Eddelbuettel and Dom Bennett and
          Robrecht Cannoodt and Dav Clark and Gergely Daróczi and
          Mark Edmondson and Colin Fay and Ellis Hughes and Lars
          Kjeldgaard and Sean Lopp and Ben Marwick and Heather Nolis
          and Jacqueline Nolis and Hong Ooi and Karthik Ram and Noam
          Ross and Lori Shepherd and Péter Sólymos and Tyson Lee
          Swetnam and Nitesh Turaga and Charlotte Van Petegem and
          Jason Williams and Craig Willis and Nan Xiao},
  title = {{The Rockerverse: Packages and Applications for
          Containerisation with R}},
  year = {2020},
  journal = {{The R Journal}},
  doi = {10.32614/RJ-2020-007},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2020-007},
  pages = {437--461},
  volume = {12},
  number = {1}
}