Abstract

The key to well-documented, well-tested and easily-distributed R code is the package. This half day class will teach you how to make package development as easy as possible with devtools and usethis. You’ll also learn roxygen2 to document your code so others (including future you!) can understand what’s going on, and testthat to avoid future breakages. The class will consist of a series of demonstrations and hands on exercises.

Topics:

• Package basics The basic structure of a package, where to put code, and the workflow that allows you to take your package code out for a test drive.
• Documentation and namespaces For your code to be useful, it must be well-documented. We’ll solve these problems with roxygen2 with documentation, and rmarkdown for vignettes and READMEs.
• Automated testing Maintaining R code requires advanced planning. You can simplify debugging, spot errors, and ensure that your package is stable by creating unit tests with the help of testhat.
• Releasing your package We’ll work through R CMD check, and the process of distributing your package on GitHub or CRAN.

Target audience: This class will be a good fit for you if you’ve developed a number of R scripts, and now you want to learn:

• a more efficient workflow, iterating between writing code and checking that it works
• how to document your code so others (including future you!) can understand what’s going on
• automated testing principles, so that if you accidentally break something in your code you find out right away
• how to package and distribute your code to others, whether it’s inside your research group, your company, or to the whole world.

Instructions: Participants should bring a laptop setup to build R packages. Detailed instructions are available here.