package.skeleton {utils}

R Documentation

Create a Skeleton for a New Source Package

Description

package.skeleton automates some of the setup for a new source package. It creates directories, saves functions, data, and R code files to appropriate places, and creates skeleton help files and a ‘Read-and-delete-me’ file describing further steps in packaging.

Usage

package.skeleton(name = "anRpackage", list,
                 environment = .GlobalEnv,
                 path = ".", force = FALSE, namespace = FALSE,
                 code_files = character())

Arguments

name	character string: the package name and directory name for your package.
list	character vector naming the R objects to put in the package. Usually, at most one of list, environment, or code_files will be supplied. See ‘Details’.
environment	an environment where objects are looked for. See ‘Details’.
path	path to put the package directory in.
force	If FALSE will not overwrite an existing directory.
namespace	a logical indicating whether to add a name space for the package. If TRUE, a NAMESPACE file is created to export all objects whose names begin with a letter, plus all S4 methods and classes.
code_files	a character vector with the paths to R code files to build the package around. See ‘Details’.

Details

The arguments list, environment, and code_files provide alternative ways to initialize the package. If code_files is supplied, the files so named will be sourced to form the environment, then used to generate the package skeleton. Otherwise list defaults to the non-hidden files in environment (those whose name does not start with .), but can be supplied to select a subset of the objects in that environment.

Stubs of help files are generated for functions, data objects, and S4 classes and methods, using the prompt, promptClass, and promptMethods functions.

The package sources are placed in subdirectory name of path. If code_files is supplied, these files are copied; otherwise, objects will be dumped into individual source files. The file names in code_files should have suffix ".R" and be in the current working directory.

The filenames created for source and documentation try to be valid for all OSes known to run R. Invalid characters are replaced by ‘⁠_⁠’, invalid names are preceded by ‘⁠zz⁠’, and finally the converted names are made unique by make.unique(sep = "_"). This can be done for code and help files but not data files (which are looked for by name). Also, the code and help files should have names starting with an ASCII letter or digit, and this is checked and if necessary z prepended.

When you are done, delete the ‘Read-and-delete-me’ file, as it should not be distributed.

Value

Used for its side-effects.

References

Read the Writing R Extensions manual for more details.

Once you have created a source package you need to install it: see the R Installation and Administration manual, INSTALL and install.packages.

See Also

prompt, promptClass, and promptMethods.

Examples

require(stats)
## two functions and two "data sets" :
f <- function(x,y) x+y
g <- function(x,y) x-y
d <- data.frame(a=1, b=2)
e <- rnorm(1000)

package.skeleton(list=c("f","g","d","e"), name="mypkg")

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