The hardware and bandwidth for this mirror is donated by METANET, the Webhosting and Full Service-Cloud Provider.
If you wish to report a bug, or if you are interested in having us mirror your free-software or open-source project, please feel free to contact us at mirror[@]metanet.ch.
Parse DESCRIPTION files
Parse, manipulate and reformat DESCRIPTION files. The package provides two APIs, one is object oriented, the other one is procedural and manipulates the files in place.
# Install the released version from CRAN
install.packages("desc")
# Or the development version from GitHub:
# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("r-lib/desc")library(desc)The object oriented API uses R6 classes.
DESCRIPTION filesA new description object can be created by reading a
DESCRIPTION file form the disk. By default the
DESCRIPTION file in the current directory is read:
desc <- description$new()desc#> Package: desc
#> Title: Manipulate DESCRIPTION Files
#> Version: 1.0.0
#> Author: Gábor Csárdi
#> Maintainer: Gábor Csárdi <csardi.gabor@gmail.com>
#> Description: Tools to read, write, create, and manipulate DESCRIPTION
#> files. It is intented for packages that create or manipulate other
#> packages.
#> License: MIT + file LICENSE
#> URL: https://github.com/r-lib/desc
#> BugReports: https://github.com/r-lib/desc/issues
#> Imports:
#> R6
#> Suggests:
#> newpackage,
#> testthat,
#> whoami
#> Encoding: UTF-8
#> LazyData: true
#> RoxygenNote: 5.0.0A new object can also be created from scratch:
desc2 <- description$new("!new")
desc2#> Package: {{ Package }}
#> Title: {{ Title }}
#> Version: 1.0.0
#> Authors@R (parsed):
#> * Jo Doe <jodoe@dom.ain> [aut, cre]
#> Maintainer: {{ Maintainer }}
#> Description: {{ Description }}
#> License: {{ License }}
#> URL: {{ URL }}
#> BugReports: {{ BugReports }}
#> Encoding: UTF-8DESCRIPTION filesMost DESCRIPTION fields may be formatted in multiple
equivalent ways. desc does not reformat fields, unless they
are updated or reformatting is explicitly requested via a call to the
normalize() method or using the normalize
argument of the write() method.
get() and set() queries or updates a
field:
desc$set("Package", "foo")
desc$get("Package")#> Package
#> "foo"They work with multiple fields as well:
desc$set(Package = "bar", Title = "Bar Package")
desc$get(c("Package", "Title"))#> Package Title
#> "bar" "Bar Package"Package dependencies can be set and updated via an easier API:
desc$get_deps()#> type package version
#> 1 Suggests testthat *
#> 2 Suggests whoami *
#> 3 Suggests newpackage *
#> 4 Imports R6 *desc$set_dep("mvtnorm")
desc$set_dep("Rcpp", "LinkingTo")
desc$get_deps()#> type package version
#> 1 Suggests testthat *
#> 2 Suggests whoami *
#> 3 Suggests newpackage *
#> 4 Imports mvtnorm *
#> 5 Imports R6 *
#> 6 LinkingTo Rcpp *desc#> Package: bar
#> Title: Bar Package
#> Version: 1.0.0
#> Author: Gábor Csárdi
#> Maintainer: Gábor Csárdi <csardi.gabor@gmail.com>
#> Description: Tools to read, write, create, and manipulate DESCRIPTION
#> files. It is intented for packages that create or manipulate other
#> packages.
#> License: MIT + file LICENSE
#> URL: https://github.com/r-lib/desc
#> BugReports: https://github.com/r-lib/desc/issues
#> Imports:
#> mvtnorm,
#> R6
#> Suggests:
#> newpackage,
#> testthat,
#> whoami
#> LinkingTo:
#> Rcpp
#> Encoding: UTF-8
#> LazyData: true
#> RoxygenNote: 5.0.0Collate fields can be queried and set using simple character vectors of file names:
desc$set_collate(list.files("../R"))#> Warning in idesc_set_collate(self, private, files, match.arg(which)): No files
#> in 'Collate' fielddesc$get_collate()#> character(0)Authors information, when specified via the Authors@R
field, also has a simplified API:
desc <- description$new("tools/pkg2")
desc$get_authors()#> [1] "Hadley Wickham <h.wickham@gmail.com> [aut, cre, cph]"
#> [2] "Peter Danenberg <pcd@roxygen.org> [aut, cph]"
#> [3] "Manuel Eugster [aut, cph]"
#> [4] "RStudio [cph]"desc$add_author("Bugs", "Bunny", email = "bb@acme.com")
desc$add_me()
desc$add_author_gh("jeroen")
desc$get_authors()#> [1] "Hadley Wickham <h.wickham@gmail.com> [aut, cre, cph]"
#> [2] "Peter Danenberg <pcd@roxygen.org> [aut, cph]"
#> [3] "Manuel Eugster [aut, cph]"
#> [4] "RStudio [cph]"
#> [5] "Bugs Bunny <bb@acme.com>"
#> [6] "First Last <first.last@dom.com> [ctb]"
#> [7] "Jeroen Ooms <jeroen@berkeley.edu> [ctb]"If the Author field is specified, it can be changed to a
Authors@R field using coerce_authors_at_r(),
incorporating the Maintainer information if necessary:
desc <- description$new("!new")
desc$del("Authors@R")
desc$del("Maintainer")
desc$set(Author = "Gábor Csárdi <csardi.gabor@gmail.com>")
desc$get_authors()#> Error in ensure_authors_at_r(self): No 'Authors@R' field!
#> You can create one with $add_author.
#> You can also use $coerce_authors_at_r() to change Author fieldsdesc$coerce_authors_at_r()
desc$get_authors()#> [1] "Gábor Csárdi <csardi.gabor@gmail.com> [aut]"The procedural API is simpler to use for one-off
DESCRIPTION manipulation, since it does not require dealing
with description objects. Each object oriented method has a
procedural counterpart that works on a file, and potentially writes its
result back to the same file.
For example, adding a new dependency to DESCRIPTION in
the current working directory can be done with
desc_set_dep("newpackage", "Suggests")#> Package: desc
#> Title: Manipulate DESCRIPTION Files
#> Version: 1.4.2.9000
#> Authors@R (parsed):
#> * Gábor Csárdi <csardi.gabor@gmail.com> [aut, cre]
#> * Kirill Müller [aut]
#> * Jim Hester <james.f.hester@gmail.com> [aut]
#> * Maëlle Salmon [ctb] (<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2815-0399>)
#> * Posit Software, PBC [cph, fnd]
#> Maintainer: Gábor Csárdi <csardi.gabor@gmail.com>
#> Description: Tools to read, write, create, and manipulate DESCRIPTION
#> files. It is intended for packages that create or manipulate other
#> packages.
#> License: MIT + file LICENSE
#> URL: https://desc.r-lib.org/, https://github.com/r-lib/desc
#> BugReports: https://github.com/r-lib/desc/issues
#> Depends:
#> R (>= 3.4)
#> Imports:
#> cli,
#> R6,
#> utils
#> Suggests:
#> callr,
#> covr,
#> gh,
#> newpackage,
#> spelling,
#> testthat,
#> whoami,
#> withr
#> Config/Needs/website: tidyverse/tidytemplate
#> Config/testthat/edition: 3
#> Encoding: UTF-8
#> Language: en-US
#> Roxygen: list(r6 = FALSE, load = "installed", markdown = TRUE)
#> RoxygenNote: 7.2.3
#> Collate:
#> 'assertions.R'
#> 'authors-at-r.R'
#> 'built.R'
#> 'classes.R'
#> 'collate.R'
#> 'constants.R'
#> 'deps.R'
#> 'desc-package.R'
#> 'description.R'
#> 'encoding.R'
#> 'find-package-root.R'
#> 'latex.R'
#> 'non-oo-api.R'
#> 'package-archives.R'
#> 'read.R'
#> 'remotes.R'
#> 'str.R'
#> 'syntax_checks.R'
#> 'urls.R'
#> 'utils.R'
#> 'validate.R'
#> 'version.R'This added newpackage to the Suggests
field:
desc_get("Suggests")#> Suggests
#> "\n callr,\n covr,\n gh,\n newpackage,\n spelling,\n testthat,\n whoami,\n withr"So the full list of dependencies are now
desc_get_deps()#> type package version
#> 1 Depends R >= 3.4
#> 2 Imports cli *
#> 3 Imports R6 *
#> 4 Imports utils *
#> 5 Suggests callr *
#> 6 Suggests covr *
#> 7 Suggests gh *
#> 8 Suggests newpackage *
#> 9 Suggests spelling *
#> 10 Suggests testthat *
#> 11 Suggests whoami *
#> 12 Suggests withr *Please note that the desc project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By contributing to this project, you agree to abide by its terms.
These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.