Creating R packages using RStudio and GitHub

Join us for a presentation by Dr. Randall Prium of Calvin College.

Title:
Creating R packages using RStudio and GitHub

Abstract:
If you use R, you should be making R packages, and not just for CRAN-released, publicly available packages that will change the world. Packages are a useful way to organize your own private work as well. (If you have ever used the source() command, you should probably be writing a package.)

The combination of GitHub and RStudio make it particularly easy to create R packages and simultaneously promote good coding habits. We’ll demonstrate how to create a new package from scratch, taking advantage of devtools and RStudio to handle some of the initial boiler plate work, roxygen2 to handle documentation of package objects, testthat for unit testing, and git/GitHub for version control, issue tracking, and dissemination. Along the way, you might learn some interesting things about R and RStudio as well.

If you want to follow along and build your own package, bring a laptop with RStudio installed and create a GitHub account prior to the meeting.