t-kalinowski/ir

ir is a command-line tool written in Rust that runs R scripts and Quarto documents in self-contained environments. R is a programming language popular in statistics and data science. Quarto is a document format that mixes code and text for reports and notebooks. The problem ir solves is that R scripts usually depend on external packages that have to be installed separately, and getting the right versions installed and available is often a manual or error-prone process. With ir, you put the package requirements directly into the script file itself using a comment header at the top. You list which packages you need, optionally specify minimum versions or a cutoff date for package resolution, and optionally pin an R version. When you run the file with ir run, it reads those requirements, prepares a package library in a local cache, and launches R with that library ready. If you run the same script again, ir reuses the cached setup instead of rebuilding it, so repeated runs are fast. The tool is designed for single-file workflows where you do not want to set up a whole project directory just to run one script. You can use it like a scripting tool where the file itself is the complete description of what it needs. It can also render Quarto documents to HTML or other formats, run one-off commands with extra packages added temporarily using the --with flag, and manage R-based executable tools via a companion command called rx. Installation is via a shell script on Linux and macOS or a PowerShell script on Windows. It can also be built from source using the Rust build tool Cargo. The tool requires R to already be installed on the system, and optionally rig (an R version manager) and quarto for their respective features. Full documentation is available at the project's website.