# rstudio/bookdown

Authoring Books and Technical Documents with R Markdown

Repository: https://github.com/rstudio/bookdown
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/bookdown
Homepage: https://pkgs.rstudio.com/bookdown/
Language: JavaScript
License: GPL-3.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: bookdown, book, gitbook, latex, html, epub, rmarkdown
Last push: 2026-08-17T23:07:17+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 87/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 98, release rhythm 65, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3962, "days_push": 16, "days_rel": 78, "gap_med": 90.5, "n_releases_24m": 7}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 4069, forks 1281 (observed 2026-08-28T04:08:34.202212+00:00)

## What it is
bookdown is an open-source R package for authoring books and long-form technical documents with R Markdown. It renders Markdown sources into multiple output formats including HTML (gitbook), PDF, LaTeX, EPUB, and Word, with support for dynamic graphics, cross-references, citations, and equations.

## Use cases
- write a technical book with R Markdown and export to PDF and EPUB
- publish reproducible research reports online as HTML
- author course materials with code examples in R, Python, and SQL
- generate a gitbook-style website from Markdown chapters
- include LaTeX equations, theorems, and figures in a long-form document
- build a book with dynamic graphics and Shiny apps embedded

## When to choose
- you write in R Markdown and want multi-format book output
- you need reproducible documents weaving code, narrative, figures, and citations
- you want an easier markup than raw LaTeX for books
- you use the RStudio IDE and want integrated build and publishing

## When to avoid
- you need a general static site generator without R/Markdown tooling
- your book has no code or reproducibility requirements and a plain LaTeX or Word workflow suffices
- you need a WYSIWYG writing environment

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: active
- function: documentation, static-site-generator, templating, pdf, markdown
- domain: documentation, data-science, education, developer-tools
- platform: python, cross-platform, cli
- tags: r-package, rmarkdown, book-authoring, gitbook, epub, latex, reproducible-research, rstudio

## Member repositories
- rstudio/bookdown (main) score 87

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:34.202212+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:23:31.495078+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/rstudio/bookdown (fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:34.202212+00:00, sha 0f44446b462f)
  - homepage: https://pkgs.rstudio.com/bookdown/ (fetched 2026-08-29T09:15:58.423459+00:00, sha 7079e1c09ea0)
  - site_page: https://pkgs.rstudio.com/bookdown/articles/publish.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:15:58.432677+00:00, sha 8a38cd78e1a8)
  - site_page: https://pkgs.rstudio.com/bookdown/news/index.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:15:58.434619+00:00, sha 982a235df151)
  - site_page: https://rmarkdown.rstudio.com (fetched 2026-08-29T09:15:58.437615+00:00, sha b56145f84fe9)
  - site_page: https://pkgs.rstudio.com/bookdown/authors.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:15:58.439260+00:00, sha 17ac24b0283e)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.