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repositoryr

The goal of repositoryr is to provide a step by step guide to creating a R package repository.

Selecting a package name

To find suggestions on valid package names use available::suggest(text="description of what the package does"). You can also check whether the package name is available using available::available("pkgname").

Using available package

Alternatively, you can use pak::pkg_name_check("healthgpsrvis", dictionaries = NULL).

Using pak package

Creating a package

  • In RStudio go to File -> New Project -> New Directory -> R Package.
  • Write the name of the package and select using renv and initialise git.
  • This will create a minimal package structure.

Create and connect with a GitHub repository

  • Create a new repository on GitHub using the same name as the package.
  • Set the visibility permissions of this repository as suitable but DO NOT initialise this repository with anything.
  • Copy a clone URL of the repository to your clipboard.

More details: Create and connect a GitHub repo

Connect local repo to GitHub repo

  • Click on the “two purple boxes and a white square” in the Git pane.
  • Click “Add remote”.
  • Paste the GitHub repo’s URL here and pick a remote name, say, origin and click “Add”.
  • Enter main as the branch name and make sure “Sync branch with remote” is checked and click “Create”.

Connect local repo to GitHub repo with the command line

  • In a shell, run the following (substituting with your URL):
git remote add origin https://github.com/ImperialCollegeLondon/repositoryr
git push --set-upstream origin main
  • You should now be able to see all the project files you committed on the GitHub repo browser.

Using devtools

  • Install devtools in RStudio using install.packages("devtools").
  • It is a set of packages that support various aspects of package development (it includes the usethis package too).

Create website for your package

  • Run `install.packages(“pkgdown”).
  • To configure the package to use and deploy pkgdown, run usethis::use_pkgdown_github_pages().
  • To preview your site locally before publishing, run pkgdown::build_site().
  • This will add the necessary components and sets up GitHub Actions for automatic site building when deploying.
  • Your README.md becomes the homepage, documentation in man/ generates a function reference, and vignettes will be rendered into articles/.

Installation

You can install the development version of repositoryr from GitHub with:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("ImperialCollegeLondon/repositoryr")

Example

This is a basic example which shows you how to solve a common problem:

library(repositoryr)
## basic example code

What is special about using README.Rmd instead of just README.md? You can include R chunks like so:

summary(cars)
#>      speed           dist       
#>  Min.   : 4.0   Min.   :  2.00  
#>  1st Qu.:12.0   1st Qu.: 26.00  
#>  Median :15.0   Median : 36.00  
#>  Mean   :15.4   Mean   : 42.98  
#>  3rd Qu.:19.0   3rd Qu.: 56.00  
#>  Max.   :25.0   Max.   :120.00

You’ll still need to render README.Rmd regularly, to keep README.md up-to-date. devtools::build_readme() is handy for this.

You can also embed plots, for example:

In that case, don’t forget to commit and push the resulting figure files, so they display on GitHub and CRAN.