6 Conclusion
Tutorial: Good Software Engineering Practice for R Packages
Daniel Sabanés Bové
July 8, 2024
Take away messages
R package structure
- R package = folder structure with (many) conventions
- With modern tools
usethis,roxygen2it is easy to start a new package - Packaging a set of functions is an ideal way to share with collaborators and the public
- Start small and simple and over time you can learn additional options
Engineering Workflow
- Use a workable workflow:
Idea \(\rightarrow\) Design docs \(\rightarrow\) Programming \(\rightarrow\) Quality check \(\rightarrow\) Publication- Don’t waste time on maintenance
- Be faster with release on CRAN
- Fulfill quality requirements of yourself and stakeholders
- Refactor your one-off scripts that you want to use in a package
- Use assertions for all arguments \(\rightarrow\) better user experience
- Implement common generics like
printandplot
Ensuring Quality
Publication
pkgdowncan help you easily create a nice website for your package- Versions and licenses along with
NEWSupdates are important - GitHub helps with tagging of release versions
- R-Hub helps with checking before CRAN submission
Closing remarks
Thank you!
- It was great to teach you today on how to build R packages
- Let’s keep in touch e.g. via the gitter chat channel for this course that you can connect to
- We welcome feedback on topics/format/content - reach out!
Possible next steps
- Bring the information back to your colleagues in your organization
- Start building your first own package and share internally first
- Later publish it open source on GitHub and submit it to CRAN
- Learn about more tips and tricks how to extend R
Photo by Pixabay on pexels.com
License information
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The source files are hosted at github.com/RCONIS/user2024-tutorial-gswep, which is forked from and a subset of the original version at github.com/RCONIS/workshop-r-swe-zrh.
Important: To use this work you must provide the name of the creators (initial authors), a link to the material, a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made
6 Conclusion Tutorial: Good Software Engineering Practice for R Packages Daniel Sabanés Bové July 8, 2024