R Cran Status

CRAN Package Status

Check a package's submission/review state, a specific historical version's fate (e.g. {package} {version}, as in btw v1.4.0), or its current R CMD check results across CRAN's test platforms.

"CRAN status" is ambiguous between two questions:

• Submission status: is/was this package (or version) in review, published, archived, or rejected? See "Submission Status".
• Check results: is the published version passing R CMD check on all platforms, or does it have WARN/ERROR/NOTE flags risking removal? See "Check Results".

CRAN's servers are a shared, unpaid resource. Never issue requests in parallel or in a tight loop — pause briefly (e.g. sleep 1) between requests, stop looping as soon as a match is found, and avoid re-fetching a page you've already checked in this session.

Workflow

1. Ask for the package name if not provided. A version may also be given (e.g. btw v1.4.0 or btw 1.4.0); strip any leading v.
2. Decide which question is being asked:
   • Version given, or request mentions submission, review, the queue, or rejection/archival → Submission Status.
   • Request mentions checks, R CMD check, WARN/ERROR/NOTE, or platforms/flavors → Check Results.
   • If genuinely ambiguous (e.g. just "check the CRAN status of x"), ask which is meant, or check both and report both.
3. Follow the relevant section below and report the result.

Submission Status

1. Check the currently published version first (see below).
2. If no version was requested, or it matches the current version: report it as the current, published release. Skip to step 5 unless it's absent from PACKAGES, in which case continue to step 3.
3. If a prior check this conversation already located the package in a stage or reviewer folder, check that folder first, then forward from it in the pipeline order (see "CRAN Review Stages") — don't re-sweep from the start. Otherwise, sweep all stage and reviewer folders.
4. Search the incoming/ stage folders (see below).
5. Search the reviewer-assigned folders (see below).
6. If a specific version was requested and doesn't match the current published version (or the package isn't published at all), check the CRAN Archive for that version (see below).
7. Report the result (see "Reporting Submission Status Results").

CRAN Review Stages

Listed in typical pipeline order — a package usually moves top to bottom, though not every package passes through every stage:

• inspect / newbies: awaiting initial manual inspection (newbies is for first-time submitters)
• pending: awaiting closer review
• human/<initials>: assigned to a CRAN reviewer
• pretest: automated checks (re)running
• waiting: CRAN is waiting for a maintainer response (loops back to pretest once the maintainer responds)
• recheck: reverse-dependency checks
• publish: approved and awaiting publication
• archive: rejected

Checking Incoming Stage Folders

Replace {package} with the actual package name. Start at the last-known stage if one exists (see Submission Status step 3), else at inspect:

for stage in inspect newbies pending pretest waiting recheck publish archive; do
  curl -Ls "https://cran.r-project.org/incoming/$stage/" |
    grep -Eio '[^"]*{package}[^"]*' &&
    echo "Stage: $stage" && break
  sleep 1
done

Checking Reviewer-Assigned Folders

Reviewer-initials folders (e.g. human/KH) change as CRAN's team changes, so discover them from the incoming/ listing instead of a fixed set: any folder there that isn't one of the stage names above is a reviewer folder.

reviewer_folders=$(
  curl -Ls "https://cran.r-project.org/incoming/" |
    grep -Eio '<a href="[^"]+/">' |
    sed -E 's/<a href="([^"]+)\/">/\1/' |
    grep -Ev '^(inspect|newbies|pending|pretest|publish|recheck|archive|waiting|special)$'
)

for stage in $reviewer_folders; do
  curl -Ls "https://cran.r-project.org/incoming/$stage/" |
    grep -Eio '[^"]*{package}[^"]*' &&
    echo "Stage: human/$stage" && break
  sleep 1
done