ess-R-pkg-compile.el

An Emacs package that attempts to save you a few seconds when developing your R package in ESS. It provides functionality for rebuilding your R package and on a successful build unload and then reload your R package within the right R process.

Other features include recursively unloading dependant packages, interactive selection from several of your packages, some do-what-I-mean functionality for choosing among R processes, individual build commands per package and invoking additional build flags with a universal argument.

Installing

Download ess-R-pkg-compile.el and put in your path.

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/path/to/ess-R-pkg-compile/")
(require 'ess-R-pkg-compile)

Minimal setup

This is useful for a single R package. Swap my-package for your package name (both places) and ~/path/to/myRpackages for the parent folder of your R package.

(ess-R-pkg-compile--macro "my-package" "~/path/to/myRpackages") ;; this will generate an interactive fuction subfixed with your package name
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c C-m") 'ess-R-pkg-compile--my-package) ;; select a suitable keybing to quickly call your new rebuild & reload function

N.b. you can use the universal argument C-u C-c C-m to add more build flags e.g. --preclean.

Multiple R packages

Create one build-reload function per package as described below. If they share a parent folder you can set a default (see the first row below).

(setq ess-R-pkg-compile--default-R-pkg-parent-path "~/path/to/myRpackages") ;; set a default parent path if you have your packages at one place, otherwise use the second argument in (ess-R-pkg-compile--macro)
(ess-R-pkg-compile--macro "my-package")                                     ;; this will generate the function "ess-R-pkg-compile--my-package"
(ess-R-pkg-compile--macro "my-second-package")                              ;; this will generate the function "ess-R-pkg-compile--my-second-package"

Now you can either 1) call these functions interactively, e.g. M-x ess-R-pkg-compile--my-package, 2) define a key-binding per package or 3) use the ess-R-pkg-compile--select-build function as described below.

(add-to-list 'ess-R-pkg-compile--build-list 'my-package)          ;; add first package to build list
(add-to-list 'ess-R-pkg-compile--build-list 'my-second-package)   ;; add second package to build list
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c C-m") 'ess-R-pkg-compile--select-build) ;; select a suitable keybing to quickly select which package to rebuild & reload

You can now use ess-R-pkg-compile--select-build to interactively choose which of your R package to rebuild and reload. If want you can use the universal argument to add more build flags e.g. C-u M-x ess-R-pkg-compile--select-build.

More configuration

Variables

• ess-R-pkg-compile--default-R-pkg-parent-path String containing the default path to the parent directory of the R packages, as we saw in the example above.
• ess-R-pkg-compile--default-compile-str String containing the default build command this is preset to R CMD INSTALL.
• ess-R-pkg-compile--assume-R-process Attempt to assume the intended R-process for the compilation. Either by the process associated with the current buffer, or if only one process exist. If set to nil the user will always be prompted to select R process. Default is t.
• ess-R-pkg-compile--buffer-kill-time Define seconds after which to kill the buffer after a successful compilation. Nil will result in buffer not being killed. Default is 0.

Other functions

• ess-R-pkg-compile--restart-R-process Find R process and offer to kill and then restart it.

How does this work?

This works through a wrapper of the compile function that includes a post-compilation hook. The function evaluated after a successful compilation attempts to unload your package in the correct R process and parses potential error messages for depending packages.

Can’t you do this with devtools?

Yes, you could quite possibly get part of this work-flow using devtools::install(pkg = "my-package", reload = TRUE) together with yasnippet or by extending ess-r-devtools.

Contribute

Thoughts and pull requests are welcome!