Mon, 09 Mar 2026

nanotime 0.3.13 on CRAN: Maintenance

Another minor update 0.3.13 for our nanotime package is now on CRAN, and has been uploaded to Debian and compiled for r2u. nanotime relies on the RcppCCTZ package (as well as the RcppDate package for additional C++ operations) and offers efficient high(er) resolution time parsing and formatting up to nanosecond resolution, using the bit64 package for the actual integer64 arithmetic. Initially implemented using the S3 system, it has benefitted greatly from a rigorous refactoring by Leonardo who not only rejigged nanotime internals in S4 but also added new S4 types for periods, intervals and durations.

This release, the first in eleven months, rounds out a few internal corners and helps Rcpp with the transition away from Rf_error to only using Rcpp::stop which deals more gracefully with error conditions and unwinding. We also updated how the vignette is made, its references, updated the continuous integration as one does, altered how the documentation site is built, gladly took a PR from Michael polishing another small aspect, and tweaked how the compilation standard is set.

The NEWS snippet below has the fuller details.

Changes in version 0.3.13 (2026-03-08)

  • The methods package is now a Depends as WRE recommends (Michael Chirico in #141 based on a suggestion by Dirk in #140)

  • The mkdocs-material documentation site is now generated via altdoc

  • Continuous Integration scripts have been updated

  • Replace Rf_error with Rcpp::stop, turn remaining one into (Rf_error) (Dirk in #143)

  • Vignette now uses the Rcpp::asis builder for pre-made pdfs (Dirk in #146 fixing #144)

  • The C++ compilation standard is explicitly set to C++17 if an R version older than 4.3.0 is used (Dirk in #148 fixing #147)

  • The vignette references have been updated

Thanks to my CRANberries, there is a diffstat report for this release. More details and examples are at the nanotime page; code, issue tickets etc at the GitHub repository – and all documentation is provided at the nanotime documentation site.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can now sponsor me at GitHub.

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