goodpractice

Advice on R Package Building

Give advice about good practices when building R packages. Advice includes functions and syntax to avoid, package structure, code complexity, code formatting, etc.

Installation

source("https://install-github.me/MangoTheCat/goodpractice")
# or
# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("mangothecat/goodpractice")

Usage

library(goodpractice)
gp("<my-package>")

Example

library(goodpractice)
# use example package contained in the goodpractice package
pkg_path <- system.file("bad1", package = "goodpractice")
g <- gp(pkg_path)
g

#> ── GP badpackage ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
#> 
#> It is good practice to
#> 
#>   ✖ not use "Depends" in DESCRIPTION, as it can cause name
#>     clashes, and poor interaction with other packages. Use
#>     "Imports" instead.
#>   ✖ omit "Date" in DESCRIPTION. It is not required and it gets
#>     invalid quite often. A build date will be added to the package
#>     when you perform `R CMD build` on it.
#>   ✖ add a "URL" field to DESCRIPTION. It helps users find
#>     information about your package online. If your package does
#>     not have a homepage, add an URL to GitHub, or the CRAN package
#>     package page.
#>   ✖ add a "BugReports" field to DESCRIPTION, and point it to a bug
#>     tracker. Many online code hosting services provide bug
#>     trackers for free, https://github.com, https://gitlab.com,
#>     etc.
#>   ✖ omit trailing semicolons from code lines. They are not needed
#>     and most R coding standards forbid them
#> 
#>     R/semicolons.R:4:30
#>     R/semicolons.R:5:29
#>     R/semicolons.R:9:38
#> 
#>   ✖ not import packages as a whole, as this can cause name clashes
#>     between the imported packages. Instead, import only the
#>     specific functions you need.
#>   ✖ fix this R CMD check ERROR: VignetteBuilder package not
#>     declared: ‘knitr’ See section ‘The DESCRIPTION file’ in the
#>     ‘Writing R Extensions’ manual.
#>   ✖ avoid 'T' and 'F', as they are just variables which are set to
#>     the logicals 'TRUE' and 'FALSE' by default, but are not
#>     reserved words and hence can be overwritten by the user.
#>     Hence, one should always use 'TRUE' and 'FALSE' for the
#>     logicals.
#> 
#>     R/tf.R:NA:NA
#>     R/tf.R:NA:NA
#>     R/tf.R:NA:NA
#>     R/tf.R:NA:NA
#>     R/tf.R:NA:NA
#>     ... and 4 more lines
#> 
#> ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

# show all available checks
# all_checks()

# run only a specific check
g_url <- gp(pkg_path, checks = "description_url")
g_url

#> ── GP badpackage ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
#> 
#> It is good practice to
#> 
#>   ✖ add a "URL" field to DESCRIPTION. It helps users find
#>     information about your package online. If your package does
#>     not have a homepage, add an URL to GitHub, or the CRAN package
#>     package page.
#> ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

# which checks were carried out?
checks(g_url)

#> [1] "description_url"

# which checks failed?
failed_checks(g)

#> [1] "no_description_depends"                
#> [2] "no_description_date"                   
#> [3] "description_url"                       
#> [4] "description_bugreports"                
#> [5] "lintr_trailing_semicolon_linter"       
#> [6] "no_import_package_as_a_whole"          
#> [7] "rcmdcheck_package_dependencies_present"
#> [8] "truefalse_not_tf"

# show the first 5 checks carried out and their results
results(g)[1:5,]

#>                    check result
#> 1                   covr     NA
#> 2              cyclocomp   TRUE
#> 3 no_description_depends  FALSE
#> 4    no_description_date  FALSE
#> 5        description_url  FALSE

License

MIT © Mango Solutions