It’s disappointing that MRAN and checkpoint are being shut down. They were incredibly simple ways to move toward more consistent environments.

We’ve moved on to the Posit package manager because of binary availability.

But! The right move for the R community would be to rally behind renv and lock files in general. This is much more in line with how the broader development community ensures reproducible software builds.

Things are still a little clunky in renv land, but I’m confident with increased adoption we’d see rapidly improved ergonomics.