Difference between R-Cran and R-Forge project? [closed]

Question

I am a beginner with R.

I found that there are two project website named CRAN and R-Forge.

What exactly is the difference between these two?

Answer 1

The CRAN, or Comprehensive R Archive Network, is the official distribution network of R packages. To publish an R package, you upload its source code to the CRAN FTP server. The package is then tested, built for the different platforms, and made available on the different mirrors around the world for download and install with install.packages().

R-forge is a package development web site which provides package development tools : source control, bugs tracking, mailing lists, etc. These are tools that are not provided by CRAN, which is only a distribution network.

Answer 2

CRAN is R's main package repository. It stores source code and builds binaries of packages. It is the default repository, so you can access packages in it with a factory-fresh copy of R. It is the first place people will look for stable versions of packages. (Bioinformatics packages tend to be on Bioconductor instead.)

R-Forge (and RForge) are package development environments as well as repositories. That means they include (SVN) source control, bug tracking and other features. You can get development versions of packages from these. Alternatives include github, Google code and bitbucket.