shard

0.2.0

Deterministic, Zero-Copy Parallel Execution for R

1packages depend

1.7Kdownloads / year

–test coverage

12/13checks pass

Overview

About

Maintained by Bradley BuchsbaumFirst published 2026-04-033 releasesCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗

Provides a parallel execution runtime for R that emphasizes deterministic memory behavior and efficient handling of large shared inputs. 'shard' enables zero-copy parallel reads via shared/memory-mapped segments, encourages explicit output buffers to avoid large result aggregation, and supervises worker processes to mitigate memory drift via controlled recycling. Diagnostics report peak memory usage, end-of-run memory return, and hidden copy/materialization events to support reproducible performance benchmarking.

Install

R (CRAN)pak (dev)Ubuntu (r2u)Fedora (COPR)openSUSE (OBS)

install.packages("shard", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")

Installs the current CRAN release. Prebuilt binaries on Windows and macOS.

if (!requireNamespace("pak", quietly = TRUE))
  install.packages("pak", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")
pak::pak("bbuchsbaum/shard")

Development version from bbuchsbaum/shard. Installs pak first if it is not already available.

Release

# enable cranapt (r2u) if it is not already set up, then install
grep -rqs r2u.stat.illinois.edu /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ \
  || curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eddelbuettel/r2u/master/inst/scripts/add_cranapt_noble.sh | sudo bash
sudo apt install -y r-cran-shard

Fast Ubuntu binaries via r2u (no compilation). The cranapt setup runs once and is skipped when it is already enabled.

bspm (used by r2u) also needs make: sudo apt install make

# enable the iucar/cran COPR if it is not already present, then install
ls /etc/yum.repos.d/*iucar*cran*.repo >/dev/null 2>&1 \
  || sudo dnf copr enable -y iucar/cran
sudo dnf install -y R-CRAN-shard

RPMs from the iucar/cran COPR, rebuilt from CRAN.

For install.packages() integration in R, also: sudo dnf install R-CoprManager

# add the autoCRAN OBS repo (Tumbleweed) if it is missing, then install
zypper -q lr | grep -qi autoCRAN \
  || sudo zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/R:/autoCRAN/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/devel:languages:R:autoCRAN.repo
sudo zypper install -y R-shard

RPMs auto-built from CRAN on openSUSE OBS (Tumbleweed).

Health

CRAN checks

1NOTE12OK

Failing flavors

NOTE r-devel-linux-x86_64-debian-gcc

Slowest check: 4.2 min · r-release-macos-x86_64

Code health

Yes

Tests · ratio 0.86

not tracked

Coverage

100%

Documentation · exports

Dependencies · direct

Check history

NOTE2026-08-01
12 OK · 1 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
OK2026-04-04
4 OK · 0 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE

Documentation

READMEYes · 388 wordsVignettesYes · dynamicpkgdown siteNoNEWSYes · 100% structuredCode of conductNoContributing guideNo

Examples that run: 25%
Documented parameters: 99%
Return-value docs: 100%
References docs: 0%

Downloads

1.7K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #8,019 · ~5/day · ~145/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

24330 days

1.2K90 days

1.7K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on171 r2u4 autocran

Repository

GitHub ↗ bbuchsbaum/shard

5Stars

0Forks

1Open issues

0Open PRs

0Releases

137Commits

2Contributors

137 commits · Last activity 2026-07-17 · +25% stars, 30d

Stars over time

2026-04-06 · 12026-07-10 · 5

Repository practices

Upstream repositoryBeta

4 development-tooling and community-health practices detected across 3 families in the upstream repository

Checks run against github.com/bbuchsbaum/shard on 2026-08-02.

Continuous integration (1)

GitHub Actions

CRAN release process (2)

cran-comments.mdCRAN-SUBMISSION

Git structural (1)

.gitattributes

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v1 (2026-07-18)

Development tooling

AI-assisted toolingBeta

Uses AI-assisted development tooling (declared in repo)

Earliest detected marker: claude on 2026-01-28

claude

Most recent: claude on 2026-01-28

Evidence

claude: on or before 2026-01-28 · evidence B, D
agents-md: on 2026-01-29 · evidence D

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v2 (updated 2026-07-29)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

8 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Depends (1)

R >= 4.1.0

Imports (5)

methodsparallelstatstoolsutils

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (8)

knitr pkgload rmarkdown testthat ps jsonlite tibble withr

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

1direct

0indirect

delarr

Code & Tests

People & History

People (1)

Maintainer (1)

Bradley Buchsbaum

Author, Maintainer, Copyright holder

Authors (1)

Bradley Buchsbaum

Author, Maintainer, Copyright holder

Bradley Buchsbaum

Author, Maintainer, Copyright holder

Package Timeline

3 releases. Pick two to compare their code metrics. R releases are shown for context.

0.2.0Latest
2026-07-18 · current release · diff ↗
R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
0.1.1
2026-04-06 · diff ↗
0.1.0
2026-04-03
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11

Package metadata

First published: 2026-04-03
Total releases: 3 / 1 yrs
License: MIT + file LICENSE OSI
Minimum R: ≥ 4.1.0
Download size: not tracked yet
Installed size: not tracked yet
With dependencies: not tracked yet

Appears in task views

High-Performance and Parallel Computing with R

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