R Dev Days are events for novice and experienced contributors to collaborate on contributions to the code, documentation and translations in base R. There are several planned in the coming months with application/registration deadlines in the next couple of weeks - don’t miss out!
Upcoming events
The table below summarises the events with close deadlines:
| Satellite to | Where | Date | Deadline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rencontres R 2025 (19-21 May) | Mons, Belgium | Thu 22 May | Fri 18 Apr |
| useR! 2025 (8-10 Aug) | Durham, NC, USA | Mon 11 Aug | Tue 15 Apr |
| RSECon25 (9-11 Sep) | Warwick, UK | Fri 12 Sep | Wed 23 Apr |
There may be further events later in the year - for the latest information, see the R Dev Days page on the R Contributors website. R Dev Days are also publicised on the R-devel mailing list, the R Contributor Mastodon, Bluesky and Meetup accounts, and the R Foundation LinkedIn!
How do R Dev Days work?
Tasks are prepared in the run-up to the event, where external contribution is welcome and good progress can be made in a day. Often this will be reviewing, analysing and/or fixing code or documentation bugs reported on R’s Bugzilla, or translating message strings from English to other languages via Weblate. You can see examples of tasks on the r-dev-day repo.
Participants express interest in tasks prior to the event or at the start of the day. This helps to allocate people into small groups that work on one or two issues for the rest of the day. At the end of the day, the groups report progress on their task and any next steps required.
Are R Dev Days for you?
R Dev Days are aimed at people with a good knowledge of R programming that are keen to contribute back to the core codebase. Most participants will be comfortable writing and debugging R functions, writing help pages and using version control. Further expertise, such as competency in C programming or advanced knowledge of statistical methods, can certainly be useful, but is not necessary for all tasks.
Part of the objective is to foster a more diverse community of contributors, so anyone that identifies as part of an underrepresented group is particularly encouraged to apply!