diff --git a/var/spack/repos/builtin/packages/r-desc/package.py b/var/spack/repos/builtin/packages/r-desc/package.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..3aa442852fabdb0a623ef11e3e7c6787267190f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/var/spack/repos/builtin/packages/r-desc/package.py
@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+# Copyright 2013-2019 Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC and other
+# Spack Project Developers. See the top-level COPYRIGHT file for details.
+#
+# SPDX-License-Identifier: (Apache-2.0 OR MIT)
+
+from spack import *
+
+
+class RDesc(RPackage):
+    """desc: Manipulate DESCRIPTION Files"""
+
+    homepage = "https://cran.r-project.org/package=desc"
+    url      = "https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/desc_1.2.0.tar.gz"
+    list_url = "https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/desc/"
+
+    version('1.2.0', sha256='e66fb5d4fc7974bc558abcdc107a1f258c9177a29dcfcf9164bc6b33dd08dae8')
+
+    depends_on('r@3.1.0:', type=('build', 'run'))
+    depends_on('r-assertthat', type=('build', 'run'))
+    depends_on('r-r6', type=('build', 'run'))
+    depends_on('r-crayon', type=('build', 'run'))
+    depends_on('r-rprojroot', type=('build', 'run'))