FEATURE REQUEST: Allow for .by syntax in summarize/summarise like dplyr

[szimmer]

Syntax in dplyr allows to use a .by argument with in summarize() as an alternative to using a group_by() function before summarize(). In the example below, I would expect the two pipelines to yield the same results and no error.

library(sf)
#> Linking to GEOS 3.13.1, GDAL 3.10.2, PROJ 9.5.1; sf_use_s2() is TRUE
library(dplyr)
#> 
#> Attaching package: 'dplyr'
#> The following objects are masked from 'package:stats':
#> 
#>     filter, lag
#> The following objects are masked from 'package:base':
#> 
#>     intersect, setdiff, setequal, union

nc = read_sf(system.file("shape/nc.shp", package="sf"))

nc_area <-
  nc %>%
  mutate(
    area_cl = cut(AREA, c(0, .1, .12, .15, .25))
  )

nc_area %>%
  group_by(area_cl) %>%
  summarize(
    across(c(AREA, BIR74, BIR79, SID74, SID79), sum),
    NCounty=n()
  )
#> Simple feature collection with 4 features and 7 fields
#> Geometry type: MULTIPOLYGON
#> Dimension:     XY
#> Bounding box:  xmin: -84.32385 ymin: 33.88199 xmax: -75.45698 ymax: 36.58965
#> Geodetic CRS:  NAD27
#> # A tibble: 4 × 8
#>   area_cl      AREA  BIR74  BIR79 SID74 SID79 NCounty                   geometry
#>   <fct>       <dbl>  <dbl>  <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>   <int>         <MULTIPOLYGON [°]>
#> 1 (0,0.1]      2.66  62238  80242   120   179      35 (((-76.68874 36.29452, -7…
#> 2 (0.1,0.12]   1.68  46196  57382    79   115      15 (((-80.93127 35.61959, -8…
#> 3 (0.12,0.15]  2.95  77364 100376   161   180      22 (((-76.46926 34.69328, -7…
#> 4 (0.15,0.25]  5.33 144164 184392   307   362      28 (((-80.76612 35.68204, -8…

nc_area %>%
  summarize(
    across(c(AREA, BIR74, BIR79, SID74, SID79), sum),
    NCounty=n(),
    .by="area_cl"
  )
#> Error in summarise.sf(., across(c(AREA, BIR74, BIR79, SID74, SID79), sum), : when using .by, also add across(geometry, st_union) as argument

^{Created on 2025-08-10 with reprex v2.1.1}

Session info

sessioninfo::session_info()
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