R package development workflow (assuming you’re using macOS or Linux)

I’m using VS Code on macOS for Python, R, Javascript (etc.) development. I needed a quick/automated workflow for my R package development at the command line, so I created this Makefile (if necessary install Python):

https://gist.github.com/thierrymoudiki/3bd7cfa099aef0c64eb5f91138d8cedb

All you need to do is: store the Makefile at the root of the package folder. Type make or make help at the command line to see all the commands available. You can start with make initialize, that will install devtools and rmarkdown, if they’re not available yet. Here’s what you can do so far:

• make clean: remove all R artifacts
• make start: start or restart R session
• make setwd: set working directory to current directory
• make docs: generate package documentation
• make check: check package for potential errors
• make install: install package
• make initialize: initialize environment (install packages)
• make load: load all (when developing the package)
• make render: run R markdown file in /vignettes (you’ll be prompted to give the file name, without extension)

Of course, work in progress (no package creation, or running tests, etc.). And also, nothing malicious about the script (ask a LLM to break it down for you if necessary 🙂 ). Feel free to comment the GitHub Gist.

.PHONY: clean docs start setwd check install load render initialize
.DEFAULT_GOAL := help

define BROWSER_PYSCRIPT
import os, webbrowser, sys
from urllib.request import pathname2url

# The input is expected to be the full HTML filename
filename = sys.argv[1]
filepath = os.path.abspath(os.path.join("./vignettes/", filename))
webbrowser.open("file://" + pathname2url(filepath))
endef
export BROWSER_PYSCRIPT

define PRINT_HELP_PYSCRIPT
import re, sys

for line in sys.stdin:
	match = re.match(r'^([a-zA-Z_-]+):.*?## (.*)$$', line)
	if match:
		target, help = match.groups()
		print("%-20s %s" % (target, help))
endef
export PRINT_HELP_PYSCRIPT

BROWSER := python3 -c "$$BROWSER_PYSCRIPT"

help:
	@python3 -c "$$PRINT_HELP_PYSCRIPT" < $(MAKEFILE_LIST)

clean: ## remove all build, test, coverage and Python artifacts
	rm -f .Rbuildignore
	rm -f .Rhistory
	rm -f *.RData
	rm -f *.Rproj
	rm -rf .Rproj.user

start: ## start or restart R session
	Rscript -e "system('R')"

setwd: ## set working directory
	Rscript -e "setwd(getwd())"

docs: clean setwd ## generate docs		
	Rscript -e "devtools::document('.')"

check: clean setwd ## check package
	Rscript -e "devtools::check('.')"

install: clean setwd ## install package
	Rscript -e "devtools::install('.')"	

initialize: setwd ## initialize environment (install packages)
	Rscript -e "utils::install.packages(c('devtools', 'rmarkdown'), repos='https://cloud.r-project.org')"		

load: clean setwd ## load all (when developing the package)
	Rscript -e "devtools::load_all('.')"

render: ## run markdown file in /vignettes
	@read -p "Enter the name of the Rmd file (without extension): " filename; \
	Rscript -e "rmarkdown::render(paste0('./vignettes/', '$$filename', '.Rmd'))"; \
	python3 -c "$$BROWSER_PYSCRIPT" "$$filename.html"