Develop R Packages Using "roxygen2"

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You have to install the R package roxygen2 first.

install.packages('roxygen2')

Roxygenize the package for compiling.

library(roxygen2)
roxygenize(path_to_package)

The following are some roxygen2 tags that I use frequently for writing R packages.

1. Some R example code can take a long time to run. To prevent the illustration code from running when checking the package, you can surround the example code with \dontrun{}. The following is such an example.

   #' @examples
   #' \dontrun{
   #' rnorm(100000)
   #' }
   

   However, be careful that it is @examples not @example. If you accidentally use @example, then you will get errors like file cannot be open (or doesn't exist) ... when you check the R package.

2. By default roxygen2 does not export a function. To export a function so that package users can use it, add tag @export before the definition of the function.

3. Use the tag @title to specify the title of a help document.

4. Use the tag @description to start the description part of a help document.

5. To import a package, use the tag @import pkg_name. To import fun1 and fun2 from a package, use the tag @importFrom pkg_name fun1 fun2.

6. By default roxygen2 creates a Rd document for each exported function with the same name as the function name. You can use the tag @rdname to override the name of the Rd document.

7. Roxygen parses comments that start with #'. Comment start with # but not #' won't be parsed. You can take advantage of this to put comment that do not need to parsed into lines starting with # but not #'.

Compile and Install R Packages

1. Compile and install package on Windows.

   R CMD INSTALL --build package_dir
   

   Notice that INSTALL must be in upper case.

2. The following LaTex packages texlive, texinfo and texlive-fonts-extra (on Linux) are need to compile R packages if you want to generate and check PDF manuals.

   wajig install texlive texinfo texlive-fonts-extra
   

   If you do not want (or have permissions) to install them, you can compile R packages without generating PDF manuals.

   R CMD build --no-manual ...
   R CMD check --no-manual ...
   

   For more details on R package build options, please refer to the post Customizing Package Build Options.