I started writing my first package as collection of various functions that I needed for (almost) daily work. Meanwhile, packages were growing and bit by bit I sourced out functions to put them into new packages. Although this means more work for CRAN members when they have more packages to manage on their network, from a user-perspective it is much better if packages have a clear focus and a well defined set of functions. That’s why I now released a new package on CRAN, sjlabelled, which contains all functions that deal with labelled data. These functions use to live in the sjmisc-package, where they now are deprecated and will be removed in a future update.
My aim is not only to provide packages with a clear focus, but also with a consistent design and philosophy, making it easier and more intuitive to use (see also here) – I prefer to follow the so called „tidyverse“-approach here. It is still work in progress, but so far I think I’m on a good way…
So, what are the packages I use for (almost) daily work?
- sjlabelled – reading, writing and working with labelled data (especially since I collaborate a lot with people who use Stata or SPSS)
- sjmisc – data and variable transformation utilities (the complement to dplyr and tidyr, when it comes down from data frames to variables within the data wrangling process)
- sjstats – out-of-the-box statistics that is not already provided by base R or packages
- sjPlot – to quickly generate tables and plot
- ggeffects – to visualize regression models
The next step is creating cheat sheets for my packages. I think if you can map the scope and idea of your package (functions) on a cheat sheet, its focus is probably well defined.
Btw, if you also use some of the above packages more or less regularly, you can install the „strengejacke“-package to load them all in one step. This package is not on CRAN, because its only purpose is to load other packages.
Disclaimer: Of course I use other packages everyday as well – this posting is just focussing on my packages that I created because I frequently needed these kind of functions.
Strenge Jacke! 
I think the „sjverse“ has reached a point where releasing the strengejacke package on CRAN as a convenient binder is warranted 😉
Yes, but indeed, I already submitted the package, and CRAN members asked me to not release it on CRAN. They did not explicitely reject the submission, but said they would „prefer“ not to have package with the only purpose of loading packages. I understand that and did not insist on having my „loader“-package on CRAN. It’s not too difficult to install that small pkg from GitHub anyway, not even for newbies, I think. 🙂
How odd! Doesn’t the tidyverse package simply load packages?
Yes, though it offers a few more functions (updating, for instance), but it also comes with a vignette describing the design-philosophy behind the tidyverse – so it’s a bit more than what my package provides. 😉 And maybe Hadley submitted the pkg before CRAN team decided not to accept packages with the only purpose of loading other packages. I didn’t inquire further, because I think the CRAN team is doing an incredible job and I don’t think it’s a real drama that my „loader-„pkg is not on CRAN, so I didn’t want to bother them.
btw, if someone has a good idea for an alternative image for the ggeffects sticker, suggestions are welcome!