R package building automation

Inspired by the post at http://giventhedata.blogspot.tw/2013/02/my-r-package-development-cheat-sheet.html. I have decided to publish my cheat script for package development as well.

Building package used to be a nightmare, filling in all those Rd files manually can cause some serious brain damage. Thanks to the roxygen2 team and knitr, building a package with nice documentation is merely running a script like what I have below. Just modify and change pkgName to the name of your package then your package should be ready in 5 minute.

## Build the package
## ---------------------------------------------------------------------

## Remove the folder if it exists
if(file.exists("./pkgName"))
    unlink("pkgName", recursive = TRUE)

## Build the package
package.skeleton("pkgName", code_files = paste("./Codes/",
                           dir("./Codes/", pattern = "\\.R$"), sep = ""),
                 force = TRUE)

## Include the data
dir.create("pkgName/data")
file.copy(from = "./FAOcountryProfile.RData",
          to = "pkgName/data/", overwrite = TRUE)
file.copy(from = "./FAOregionProfile.RData",
          to = "pkgName/data/", overwrite = TRUE)
file.copy(from = "./FAOmetaTable.RData",
          to = "pkgName/data/", overwrite = TRUE)
file.copy(from = "./DESCRIPTION", to = "pkgName/",
          overwrite = TRUE)

## Include Demo
dir.create("pkgName/demo")
file.copy(from = "./pkgNamedemo.R",
          to = "pkgName/demo/", overwrite = TRUE)
cat("pkgNamedemo Demonstration for the pkgName package\n",
    file = "pkgName/demo/00Index")

## Use roxygen to build the documentation
library(roxygen2)
roxygenize("pkgName")

## Include vignette
dir.create("./pkgName/inst/doc/")
file.copy(from = "../Documentation/pkgName/pkgName.pdf",
          to = "./pkgName/inst/doc/", overwrite = TRUE)

## Create the vignette hack from (http://yihui.name/knitr/demo/vignette/)
## This is not required for R 3.0.0
cat("%\\VignetteIndexEntry{General Manual}\n\\documentclass{article}\n\\begin{document}\n\\end{document}", file = "./pkgName/inst/doc/pkgName.Rnw")

## Build and check the package
system("R CMD INSTALL --build pkgName")
system("R CMD build pkgName")
system("Rcmd check pkgName")
system("Rcmd check --as-cran pkgName")

PS: This is my first post using Rmd, the highlight for R is defintely much better than plain text. However, I think some twick is required for my blog theme.

A package for agricultural statistic: FAOSTAT

After 8 years of using R, today I finally become a contributor to the community and released my first package, FAOSTAT.

The package is designed to provide user with direct access to the FAOSTAT data base via R and to support the open data and methodology philosophy used in the Statistical Yearbook of the Food and Agricultural Organization.

The package can be downloaded and installed the same way as other package in a single line:

install.packages("FAOSTAT")

Or the latest development version from github:

 library(devtools)
install_github("FAOSTAT","mkao006") 

A draft documentation can be found at:

vignette("FAOSTAT", package = "FAOSTAT")