[R] How to pack my stuff into a package (library, collection)?

Tribo Laboy tribolaboy at gmail.com
Tue Apr 8 13:08:30 CEST 2008


Thanks all for the help and suggestions. I am little by little finding
my way. I have another question to the people who use the R packaging
system. Say I have a function called "myfun.R". Where am I supposed to
write the help to that function? When I use promt("myfun") or
package.skeleton("myfun") I get a skeleton of the .Rd file which
contains both help and R source. What do you do with the original .R
source file then - do you delete it? I suppose it is not necessary
anymore and all changes to R source and help can be done
simultaneously in the .Rd file. Then it can be used to generate all
the help and R files to be run. But then .Rd files cannot be run
directly from R, so each time a change is done to the source, it must
be re-exported in an .R file and run. Please tell me if I am wrong. Do
you keep R-souce and R-help in separate files while developing and
then combine them in a single .Rd file when you're finished?

Yours still confused,

TL

On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 3:13 PM, Tribo Laboy <tribolaboy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
>  I am new useR, I have written some functions, which I currently use by
>  "source"-ing them from the files.
>  That's OK, but when I my functions start counting in the tens and
>  hundreds I'd be glad to be able to type
>  "help.search("my_obscure_fun")" and get a sensible reply. I also want
>  to be able to load them as a package at startup and not have to
>  "source" each one individually. I read through the "Writing R
>  Extensions" file, but I am overwhelmed with the vast amount of
>  prescribed detail that Extension Authors must follow - directory
>  structure, file structure, etc. Luckily, I found the "prompt"
>  function, which helps in writing of help-files in the form of "fill-in
>   the blanks". But that's only for the help-files. Reading further, it
>  gets even more complicated. The user is referred to the "R
>  Installation and Administration" document, which says that:
>
>  If you want to build R or add-on packages from source in Windows, you
>  will need to collect, install and test an extensive set of tools.
>
>  These seem to include among others Perl and compiler. But R is an
>  interpreted and cross-platform language, I don't understand the need
>  for additional platform specific tools just to call a user collection
>  of R-files. Anyone knows of a smooth introduction to these topics?
>
>  Rgards,
>  TL
>



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