Apparently creating R packages is a good idea for code reuse. So what’s the best way to do it?
Hopefully in this short blog post I will take you from start to finish as quickly as possible (omitting details for you to fill in)
Useful Packages
Firstly install devtools:
install.packages("devtools", dependencies = TRUE)
This is for using dev_mode() which will isolate an environment for you to do more testing.
library(devtools)
dev_mode()
create()
Navigate to the working directory and just create a package:
create("mypackage")
Put in your R scripts in the folder R. And that is basically it.
You have an R package finished! All that is left is to fill in documentation
and metadata for your package.
Metadata
DESCRIPTION
Fill in the DESCRIPTION file which should have been created when you can create("mypackage").
document()
Documentation is easily achieved through docstrings using the library devtools through the package roxygen.
Syntactically it is similar to markdown, this also is beyond the scope of this post.
If you wish to export this function in the package remember to use the docstring @export.
To build documentation simply use document().
test()
To add tests create a folder inst/tests, prepending all tests scripts with test-*.r where the
wildcard is well…a wildcard. To test, simply use test().
build()
Finally, build your package using build(), to create your tar file for sharing.
And thats it. You have built a package.
Update