waR: A battle-hardened R workspace

A workspace directory to make it easier to develop R packages. Check this project out (e.g. in /srv/devel), then any R packages in subdirectories within (e.g. /srv/devel/my_package).

The waR .Rprofile will be loaded whenever you run R from within the waR directory.

The .Rprofile does nothing for non-interactive sessions.

R startup

Several features can be enabled by passing extra arguments to R --args ...:

# Install local package(s) on startup
R --args package_directory another_package

# Install package & Run a script on startup (via. psource(), so working directory is package_directory/)
R --args package_directory package_directory/test/test-foo.R

# Install package, run last command
R --args package_directory last

# Set environment variable, run script
R --args PARROTS=yes package_directory/test/test-foo.R

# Run arbitary R command
R --args 'print("hello")' 'print("world")'

R shutdown

History is saved to .Rhistory on shutdown.

In addition psource() will save history before sourcing a script, in case it crashes your R session.

R Errors

Stack traces are added to any errors.

hijack()

hijack() extracts state from within a long-running process & saves it to the globalenv for inspection.

Insert a call to hijack() deep within a package, run a script then inspect the state at the R prompt. Examples:

# Save every local variable to the global environment
hijack()

# Save foo, bar, baz to the global environment
hijack(foo, bar, baz)

# Save a reference to the local environment to moo
hijack(moo = environment())
# ... later, do moo$foo

# Save a computed value to baa
hijack(baa = foo + bar + baz)

NB: hijack() will not be available outside interactive sessions. This is intentional, so you don't accidentally release code containing hijack() commands.

strl()

Similar to hijack, strl() wraps str(), but puts all arguments in a list first.

# Equivalent to str(list( moo = moo, oink = oink, baa = 4 + 5 ))
strl(moo, oink, baa = 4 + 5)

psource()

psource() is an imProved source(). In addition to source()'s capabilities, it will:

• Go into the package directory the script is from before running (it walks upwards until it finds a .git or DESCRIPTION).
• Set (and restore) environment variables with the environ option
• Save command history in case the R session dies
• Automatically processes .Rmd files with knitr::purl()

# Run a test script as if it was inside a package
psource('package/tests/test-this.R')

# Run a vignette
psource('package/vignettes/my_vignette.Rmd', echo = TRUE)

print.formula()

Add a print method to formula, printing the contents of the environment as well as the code.