Get started with rcompendium

GIT configuration

First ensure that GIT is correctly installed on your machine and linked to RStudio. Read the Chapter 6 of Happy Git and GitHub for the useR.

You also need to store your GIT credentials locally (i.e. for the project) or globally (recommended). Run gh::gh_whoami() to see if your git and associated credentials are correctly configured. You should see something like:

{
  "name": "John Doe",
  "login": "jdoe",
  "html_url": "https://github.com/jdoe",
  ...
}

Otherwise you might need to run:

gert::git_config_global_set(name = "user.name",   value = "John Doe")
gert::git_config_global_set(name = "user.email",  value = "john.doe@domain.com")
gert::git_config_global_set(name = "github.user", value = "jdoe")

See ?gert::git_config_global_set for further information.

Creating a GitHub repo

To create the GitHub repository directly from R, the package rcompendium uses the function usethis::use_github(), a client to the GitHub REST API. The interaction with this API required an authentication method: a GITHUB PAT (Personal Access Token).

If you don’t have a GITHUB PAT locally stored, you must:

1. visit the page https://github.com/settings/tokens and create a new token;
2. store it in the ~/.Renviron file by using usethis::edit_r_environ() and adding the following line: GITHUB_PAT='ghp_99z9...z9'.

Run usethis::gh_token_help() for more information about getting and configuring a GITHUB PAT.

If everything is well configured, you should see something like this after calling gh::gh_whoami():

{
  "name": "John Doe",
  "login": "jdoe",
  "html_url": "https://github.com/jdoe",
  "scopes": "delete_repo, repo, workflow",
  "token": "ghp_99z9...z9"
}

Then you will be able to create a GitHub repository directly from R!

Managing credentials

You can use the arguments given, family, email, and orcid directly with the functions new_*() and add_*(). But if you create a lot a projects (packages and/or compendia) it can be frustrating in the long run.

An alternative way is to use ONCE AND FOR ALL the function set_credentials() to permanently store this information in the ~/.Rprofile file. If these arguments are set to NULL while calling any function of the package, rcompendium will search their values in this file. It will save your time (it’s the purpose of this package).

Even if you have stored your credentials in the ~/.Rprofile file you will always be able to modify them on-the-fly (i.e. by using credentials arguments in the functions new_*() and add_*()) or permanently by re-running set_credentials().