[R] Work with packages without using R CMD build/install

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 16/09/2008 8:12 AM, KarstenW wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> for my small project I would like to organize the data, functions and
> documentation as a package. 
> 
> I have already created a skeleton directory structure with DESCRIPTION file
> and put some files in the R, man and data subdirectories.
> 
> Now I would like to work on the package without calling R CMD build/install
> after each change. In fact, I do not have the build tools installed yet (I
> am on Windows) and hope to get along without them (using r-forge).
> Currently, I do not plan to use C or Fortran extensions.
> 
> But when I run in the R (2.7.2) console
> 
>> library(mypkg, lib.loc="mypath")
> 
> the system answers that there is no package named 'mypkg'.
> 
> Is it possible to use the package infrastructure without calling R CMD ...
> after each change?

The install.packages() function can call the script for you, but it's a 
little tricky, because it might fail if you have the package loaded.  It 
would be nice if there were a reinstall.packages() function that could 
reliably unload a package before calling install.packages, but currently 
there isn't.

Duncan Murdoch