Packages

Note that using RStudio greatly facilitates package creation and build, as all the process has been completely integrated in the IDE.

1. Creation
2. Documentation
3. Build

Creation

One can use package.skeleton to create a package from a set of R scripts located in a folder.

all.files <- list.files("myFolder/", recursive = TRUE, full.name = TRUE)
package.skeleton("PackageName", code_files = all.files, namespace = TRUE, force = TRUE)

All pre-existing *.R files will be put directly inside an R/ folder, and documentation will be automatically generated for each function/file in doc/. See “Documentation” paragraph.

Documentation

One recommended way to manage package documentation is by using roxygen. The main advantage is that code and documentation are in the same file, facilitating documentation update during development.

install.packages("roxygen")
library("roxygen")

After creation of a package with package.skeleton, source code can be “roxygenized”“ to create separate documentation files.

roxygenize("PackageName", copy.package = FALSE, )

Build

It's a 2-step process. First check the global structure of the package, then build it.

Check global structure (must be located above PackageName folder)

R CMD check PackageName

Build package (must be located above PackageName folder)

R CMD build PackageName

This step will produce an archive (PackageName_1.0.tar.gz) allowing to install your package.

Note: In Unix environment, building a R package needs pdflatex (and many other dependencies: lmodern luatex tex-common texlive-base texlive-binaries texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-latex-base-doc texlive-luatex…). Other packages are also needed but not installed by default.

sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-base sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-recommended texlive-latex-extra texlive-fonts-recommended

This work by Celine Hernandez is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.