Skip to main content

Bioconductor Packages: Development, Maintenance, and Peer Review

2 Package name

The package name should match the GitHub repository name and is case-sensitive. A package name should be descriptive and should not already exist as a current package (case-insensitive) in Bioconductor nor CRAN. Reusing archived or deprecated package names is also strongly discouraged and often will not be allowed. Before submission please inquire about using a legacy package name on the mailing list.

An easy way to check whether your name is already in use is to check that the following command fails using the ‘devel’ version of Bioconductor:

if (!require("BiocManager")) {
  install.packages("BiocManager")
}
BiocManager::install("MyPackage")

One could also search the Bioconductor browsable code base to search for similar or existing names of packages, functions, or classes.

In addition, avoid package names that:

  • Are easily confused with existing package names, function names, class names.
  • Imply a temporal (e.g. ExistingPackage2) or qualitative (e.g. ExistingPackagePlus) relationship.
  • Suggest hate speech, slurs or profanity, either implicitly or explicitly.
  • Invoke or refer to any historical, ethical, or political contexts.
  • Reference well known people, characters, brands, places or icons.

Also, to avoid unwanted meanings in foreign languages, name checkers such as wordsafety might be used on the proposed package name.

Please consider the name of your package carefully. Bioconductor will discourage renaming your package after acceptance. The process for renaming a package is to deprecate the old named package and to re-submit the newly named package to the review tracker and be subject to a new review. This is timely process and should not be undertaken lightly.