Is there a standard location to find documentation on how to get things set up in RStudio in order to work on an existing project as a developer?
(To reproduce this, start with a new installation of RStudio; I have used rocker/tidyverse.)
A simple example: the wonderful "R for Data Science" (R4DS) book. As a User, I would be making use of the pre-rendered book (https://r4ds.hadley.nz/). But what if I want to get into the content as a Developer, e.g. I want to suggest some changes with an issue/PR?
The first thing is to create a project in RStudio with git and pull down everything from GitHub (GitHub - hadley/r4ds: R for data science: a book). And then ... ? If I go to Build -> Render Book -> HTML Format, I get an error that a package (palmerpenguins) is not installed. If I install that, it gets further along until it errors due to another package not being available. I would like to avoid all of this up front and have the environment set up with everything necessary to render the book. I looked for a renv file; I don't see that anywhere. I tried devtools:install_dev_deps() and that installed everything needed for an error-free rendering.
My question: how would one know to use devtools_install_dev_deps()? And is this what I am expected to use? I only know about this function because of a large package I was previously working on as a developer. I have not found any mention in the R4DS documentation or its GitHub entry on how to set up the developer environment (maybe I missed it?).
I am hoping there is a standard location in quarto sites, R packages, shiny apps, etc. where a new developer can find:
- how to install all needed packages (renv? devtools_install_deps? something else?)
- any system software that needs to be installed, e.g. qpdf
- anything else which the project requires in order for a developer to build, run the tests, etc.
Thanks for any guidance you can provide.