New in Nexus Repository 3.20: R Format Support & More

December 19, 2019 By Brent Kostak

3 minute read time

We are pleased to announce the release of Nexus Repository 3.20 and, after much anticipation, native support for R repositories. R is a language used for statistical analysis and machine learning which has been a popular request from our Nexus users and customers.

From the original community-contributed format to a first-class Nexus Repository format, users can now create R proxy and hosted repositories within Nexus Repository OSS and Pro!

From New Zealand to Nexus Repository

Developers everywhere are leveraging the power of R for a wide variety of statistical and graphical techniques. In an era where big data is accelerating business transformation, engineers and data scientists are playing bigger, and more important, roles in building algorithms and analysis that define connected technologies.

Originally developed at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, the R programming language and community are noted for active package contributions. R is highly extensible and has over 15,000 packages on CRAN (Comprehensive R Archive Network). The ability to cache these dependencies in your repositories reiterates the commitment to a single source of truth for universal repository management with Nexus Repository.

‘Plugin’ to VS Code for Insights into R Dependencies

One of the most common questions we get from teams is, “This is great, but can I start leveraging other Nexus developer tools where I currently work?” Providing value to developers with the right tool, in the right environment, at the right time has been a core driver for Sonatype and the Nexus Platform. 

While we've historically supported IDE integrations with Eclipse and IntelliJ, many of our Nexus users have requested extensions to VS Code to not only develop their software, but also provide capabilities to scan for vulnerable components. We're working hard to address that, most recently with the extremely popular VS Code extension to Nexus Lifecycle and now with our new, and completely FREE, extension to Sonatype's OSS Index

**Note - Please refer to the Visual Studio Code plugin link above for setup instructions and further “Extension Settings” details.

Developers using Visual Studio Code can scan their R libraries with the free Sonatype OSS Index data to examine each package version for security vulnerabilities.

r_scan_bigger

For new npm enhancements, cleanup policies, and details on Nexus Repository 3.20 features, check out the full release notes. If you have any questions or feedback, as always, connect with Sonatype experts and your peers at my.sonatype.com.

Cheers!

Tags: visual studio, Nexus Repository, integrations, intellij, learning center, Product, R

Written by Brent Kostak

Brent is the Director of Product Marketing connecting developers and DevOps communities to Sonatype Nexus tools and technologies.