install.packages(c("usethis", "pkgdown"))
Pre-lecture materials
Read ahead
Prerequisites
Before starting you must install the additional package:
pkgdown
- the R package that helps you to build a package website with little effortsusethis
- an automation package that simplifies project creation and setup
You can do this by calling
or use the “Install Packages…” option from the “Tools” menu in RStudio.
You also need to have a GitHub
account and set up your access from your local computer to GitHub.com
. If you forget, please re-visit your previous lecture.
Acknowledgements
Material for this lecture was borrowed and adopted from
Learning objectives
Why do we want a website for our packages?
The primary reason to make a website for our packages is to make it more popular. Having a publicly available website is similar to create a home for your package where people know where to find you package. Reciprocally, you can tell others a more stable address, i.e. your website link, to find your package.
Moreover, compare to the default reference manual, a website provides more interactability and accessibility. It is easier to navigate through different functions via clickable links or to follow through a vignette with a table of content in a point-and-click system. A website is also a more integrative resources where it keeps not only the reference manual and vignettes, but also change-log and development history. All of these makes it easier for the users to understand and appreciate your work.
In addition, a website is a great place to market yourself and show your personality. Different from a GitHub
repo which follows the same template, a website is the place where you have more freedom to showcase your creativity. You can customize the websites and have more space to explain.
What is pkgdown
?
While creating a website can be a daunting task for people who don’t have extensive web programming experience, pkgdown
provides a shortcut. pkgdown
can automatically generate a website of an R package, containing references to the enclosed function, different vignettes if exists, within two lines of code (slight exaggeration). It also helps to deploy the website to GitHub
server. Amazingly, pkgdown
facilitates automatic updates of the website following any changes made to the package that are pushed to GitHub
.
How to use pkgdown
?
Live demonstration
While the pkgdown
website provides a comprehensive walkthrough for those who set up their GitHub
access using personal access token, it is slightly tricky for those whose access is set up with SSH. During this lecture, we live demonstrate how to deploy the website, specifically for SSH GitHub
access.
Website customization
There are a lot of customization possible. Nevertheless, there is no point-and-click system for it. You need to manually edit _pkgdown.yml
following certain syntax. Please refer to https://pkgdown.r-lib.org/articles/customise.html.
Summary
In this lecture, we
- introduce the package
pkgdown
that automates website - demonstrate how to use
pkgdown
to create website for an R package