Export and document check_dir

[jrounds]

Short version:
Can you export devtools:::check_dir and rename it to devtools::package_root, and give it a default parameter of ".".

Long version:

Been using devtools at work to develop analysis packages. One common thing I do is put extra scripts in what is a package directory. These scripts usually need some awareness of their relative location to package root, but it occurred to me that devtools::load_all() has an ability to find package root no matter what the working directory is as long as it is a sub-directory of the package. I inspected the source and noted it all came down to devtools::check_dir("."), and I thought this is wonderful...

Shouldn't everything we code use that as a root directory? This way a source file never needs to know where it is relative to the root of a package. For example I was modifying a colleagues data structure and wanted to save it in package_root/data. A way to do that in devtools is:

save(tcga_ovarian_pepdata_bp, file = file.path(devtools:::check_dir("."), "data","ModifiedOvarianPepdataBP.Rdata"))

Now no matter where this script ends up in any sub-directory of the package the object will always be saved in package_root/data. I can put this save two nested directories deep and the script doesn't need to know. That is cool! But, it isn't exported and has a cryptic name.

[hadley]

Nice idea!

I made it work so you can do:

save(tcga_ovarian_pepdata_bp, file = package_path("data","ModifiedOvarianPepdataBP.Rdata"))

[hadley]

BTW in this case you'd probably be better off using saveRDS().

[gaborcsardi]

👍

[jrounds]

Thanks!

[jennybc]

This way a source file never needs to know where it is relative to the root of a package.

Slightly off-topic but .. if only something this sane could be used in an RStudio project that isn't an R package .... rstudioapi::project_file()?

[hadley]

@jennybc I don't see why not. File an issue over there?

[lock]

This old issue has been automatically locked. If you believe you have found a related problem, please file a new issue (with reprex) and link to this issue. https://reprex.tidyverse.org/