Creating an R Package

These notes just describe how to create a package — they won’t describe the whole development workflow of writing code, testing, building, etc.

The usethis package heavily scaffolds creating and modifying components of an R package.

Create the Package

Navigate to the directory we want the package to live in, then run the following R code:

usethis::create_package("pkg_name")

This will create a pretty bare-bones package, including DESCRIPTION and NAMESPACE files.

Adding Other Components

{usethis} contains helper functions to add other components we might want to use in our package. These functions are all prefixed with use_**, e.g. use_make() will create a makefile, use_mit_license() will add an MIT license to the package, etc.

Here’s a reference for these functions, but here are the ones I find most useful:

• use_r("file_name") — creates an R file
• use_test("file_name") — creates a test file for “file_name”
• use_readme_rmd() — creates a README.rmd file. This is my default, but I’ll sometimes use use_readme_md() if I don’t need to execute R code when I generate my readme.
• use_testthat() — sets up testing via testthat
• use_mit_license() — adds the MIT license to the project
• use_pkgdown or use_pkgdown_github_pages() — creates a pkgdown docs site.
• use_package("pkg_name") — depend on another package
• use_dev_package("pkg_name", remote) — depend on a development package
• use_git() — initializes a git repository for the package

Other Readings

• R Packages