NEWS.md

devtools 1.10.0.9000

• revdep_check() outputs a status message giving elapsed and estimated remaining time every 10 packages.

• revdep_check() is can now be resumed after a failure - this should be a big time saver if something goes unexpected wrong in the middle of the checks. You can resume a partial check with revdep_check_resume() or blow away the cache so you can start afresh with revdep_check_reset().

• Package index caches for revdep_check() now time out after 30 minutes.

• revdep_check_save_logs() has been removed.

• Experimental revdep_email() to individual email each maintainer with R CMD check summary results (#1014).

• All revdep_ functions now work like other devtools functions, taking a path to the package as the first argument. revdep_check() now saves its results to disk (so you can't accidentally lose them), and the other functions read from that cache. You will need to update your revdep check codes.

• revdep_check_print_problems() prints a bulleted list of problems, suitable for including in your cran-comments.md.

• revdep_check_summary() has been removed - it never should have been part of the exported API.

• revdep_check_save_summary() now truncates individual problems to at most 25 lines - this avoids length output for very length example errors.

• revdep_check_save_summary() saves a parsed version of the results as check.rds.

• All use_ function have been overhauled to be more consistent. This includes more consistent output. Most functions now also ask to overwrite if a file already exists (#1074).

• Deprecated use_coveralls(), add_rstudio_project(), add_test_infrastructure(), and add_travis() have been removed.

• revdep_check_save_summary() now creates README.md to save one level of clicking in github.

• use_coverage() now adds covr to suggests, rather than recommending you install it explicitly in .travis.yml.

• check_built() allows you to run R CMD check on an already built package.

• system_check() gains new arguments path to controls the working directory of the command, and throw to control whether or not it throws an error on command failure. env has been renamed to the more explicit env_vars.

• revdep_check() now reports summary results as they come in.

• check() now always succeeds (instead of throwing an error when R CMD check finds an ERROR), returning an object that summarises the check failures.

• check() gains a run_dont_test argument to control whether or not \donttest{} tests are tested. This defaults to FALSE, but release() runs check with it set to TRUE (#1071).

• The cleanup argument to check() is deprecated: it now always returns the path to the check directory.

• use_travis() generates a template compatible with the newest R-travis.

• build_win() defaults to only R-devel, since this is most commonly what you want.

• release() has been tweaked to improve the order of the questions, and ensure that you're ok with problems.

• Help shims now inform you that you're using development documentation (#1049).

• use_github() prints the url of the repo (#1063).

• use_testthat() tells you what it's doing (#1056).

• use_news(), and use_test() open the files in RStudio (if you're using it and have rstudioapi installed).

• use_readme_md() creates a basic README.md template (#1064).

• revdep_check() doesn't complain about missing git2r package anymore (#1068, @krlmlr).

devtools 1.10.0

New features

• curl, evaluate, roxygen2 and rversions have been moved from Imports to Suggests to lighten the dependency load of devtools. If you run a function that needs one of the packages, you'll prompted to install it (#962, @jimhester).

• Devtools uses a new strategy for detecting RTools on windows: it now only looks for Rtools if you need to load_all() or build() a package with compiled code. This should make it easier to work with devtools if you're developing pure R packages (#947).

• package_file() lets you find files inside a package. It starts by finding the root directory of the package (i.e. the directory that contains DESCRIPTION) (#985).

• use_news_md() adds a basic NEWS.md template (#957).

• use_mit_license() writes the necessary infrastructure to declare and release an R package under the MIT license in a CRAN-compliant way. (#995, @kevinushey)

• check(cran = TRUE) adds --run-donttest since you do need to test code in \dontest() for CRAN submission (#1002).

Package installation

• install() installs packages specified in the Additional_repositories field, such as drat repositories. (#907, #1028, @jimhester). It correctly installs missing dependencies (#1013, @gaborcsardi). If called on a Bioconductor package, include the Bioconductor repositories if they are not already set (#895, @jimhester).

• install() gains a metadata argument which lets you add extra fields to the DESCRIPTION on install. (#1027, @rmflight)

• install_github() and install_git() only downloads and installs the package if the remote SHA1 reference differs from the currently installed reference (#903, @jimhester).

• install_local() captures git and github information and stores it in the DESCRIPTION (#1027, @rmflight).

• install_version() is more robust when handling multiple repos (#943, #1030, @jimhester).

• Bugfix for Remotes: feature that prevented it from working if devtools was not attached as is done in travis-r (#936, @jimhester).

Bug fixes and minor improvements

• check_dev_versions() checks only package dependencies (#983).

• check_man() replaces check_doc() (since most other functions are named after the corresponding directory). check_doc() will hang around as an alias for the forseeable future (#958).

• create() produces a dummy namespace will fake comment so roxygen2 will overwrite silently (#1016).

• create() and setup() are more permissive -- they now accept a path to either a new directory or empty directory. (#966, @kevinushey)

• document() now only runs update_collate() once.

• load_all() resolves a longstanding lazy load database corruption issue when reloading packages which define S3 methods on generics from base or other packages (#1001, @jimhester).

• release_checks() gains two new checks:

  • check_vignette_titles() checks that your vignette titles aren't the default "Vignette Title" (#960, @jennybc).

  • check_news_md() checks that NEWS.md isn't in your .Rbuildignore (since it's now supported by CRAN, #1042).

• revdep_check():

  • More verbose about which package is installed (#926, @krlmlr)

  • Verifies the integrity of already downloaded package archives (#930, @krlmlr)

  • Is now more tolerant of errors when retrieving the summary for a checked package (#929, @krlmlr).

  • When ncpus > 1, it includes the package name for when so you know which package has failed and can start looking at the output without needing to wait for all packages to finish (@mattdowle).

  • Uses proper repository when BiocInstaller::useDevel(TRUE) (#937, @jimhester).

• Shimmed system.file() now respects mustWork = TRUE and throws an error if the file does not exist (#1034).

• use_appveyor() template now creates failure.zip artifact instead of polluting the logs with R CMD check output (#1017, @krlmlr, @HenrikBengtsson).

• use_cran_comments() template has been improved (#1038).

• use_data() now warns when trying to save the same object twice, and stops if there is no object to save (#948, @krlmlr).

• use_revdep_check() no longer includes revdep_check_save_logs in default template. I found I never used the logs and they just cluttered up the package directory (#1003).

• with_*() functions have moved into the withr package, and devtools functions have been deprecated (#925, @jimhester).

devtools 1.9.1

• Avoid importing heavy dependencies to speed up loading (#830, @krlmlr).

• Remove explicit library(testthat) call in test() (#798, @krlmlr).

• as.package() and load_all() gain new argument create. Like other functions with a pkg argument, load_all() looks for a DESCRIPTION file in parent directories - if create = TRUE it will be automatically created if there's a R/ or data/ directory (#852, @krlmlr).

• build_vignettes() gains dependencies argument (#825, @krlmlr).

• build_win() now uses curl instead of RCurl for ftp upload.

• build_win() asks for consent to receive e-mail at maintainer address in interactive mode (#800, @krlmlr).

• check() now uses a better strategy when cran = TRUE. Instead of attempting to simulate --as-cran behaviour by turning on certain env vars, it now uses --as-cran and turns off problematic checks with env vars (#866). The problematic cran_env_vars() function has been removed.

• find_rtools() now looks for registry keys in both HKCU (user) and HKLM (admin) locations (@Kevin-Jin, #844)

• install() can now install dependencies from remote repositories by specifying them as Remotes in the DESCRIPTION file (#902, @jimhester). See vignette("dependencies") for more details.

• install_*() detects if called on a Bioconductor package and if so, automatically includes the Bioconductor repositories if needed (#895, @jimhester).

• install_deps() now automatically upgrades out of date dependencies. This is typically what you want when you're working on a development version of a package. To suppress this behaviour, set upgrade_dependencies = FALSE (#863). install_deps() is more careful with ... - this means additional arguments to install_* are more likely to work (#870).

• install_gitorious() has been removed since gitorious no longer exists (#913).

• load_all() no longer fails if a useDynLib() entry in the NAMESPACE is incorrect. This should make it easy to recover from an incorrect @useDynLib, because re-documenting() should now succeed.

• release() works for packages not located at root of git repository (#845, #846, @mbjones).

• revdep_check() now installs suggested packages by default (#808), and sets NOT_CRAN env var to false (#809). This makes testing more similar to CRAN so that more packages should pass cleanly. It also sets RGL_USE_NULL to true to stop rgl windows from popping up during testing (#897). It also downloads all source packages at the beginning - this makes life a bit easier if you're on a flaky internet connection (#906).

• New uninstall() removes installed package (#820, @krlmlr).

• Add use_coverage() function to add codecov.io or coveralls.io to a project, deprecate use_coveralls() (@jimhester, #822, #818).

• use_cran_badge() uses canonical url form preferred by CRAN.

• use_data() also works with data from the parent frame (#829, @krlmlr).

• use_git_hook() now creates .git/hooks if needed (#888)

• GitHub integration extended: use_github() gains a protocol argument (ssh or https), populates URL and BugReports fields of DESCRIPTION (only if non-existent or empty), pushes to the newly created GitHub repo, and sets a remote tracking branch. use_github_links() is a new exported function. dr_github() diagnoses more possible problems. (#642, @jennybc).

• use_travis(): Default travis script leaves notifications on default settings.

• uses_testthat() and check_failures() are now exported (#824, #839, @krlmlr).

• use_readme_rmd() uses uses_git() correctly (#793).

• with_debug() now uses with_makevars() rather than with_env(), because R reads compilation variables from the Makevars rather than the environment (@jimhester, #788).

• Properly reset library path after with_lib() (#836, @krlmlr).

• remove_s4classes() performs a topological sort of the classes (#848, #849, @famuvie).

• load_all() warns (instead of failing) if importing symbols, methods, or classes from NAMESPACE fails (@krlmlr, #921).

devtools 1.8.0

Helpers

• New dr_devtools() runs some common diagnostics: are you using the latest version of R and devtools? It is run automatically by release() (#592).

• use_code_of_conduct() adds a contributor code of conduct from http://contributor-covenant.org. (#729)

• use_coveralls() allows you to easily add test coverage with coveralls (@jimhester, #680, #681).

• use_git() sets up a package to use git, initialising the repo and checking the existing files.

• use_test() adds a new test file (#769, @krlmlr).

• New use_cran_badge() adds a CRAN status badge that you can copy into a README file. Green indicates package is on CRAN. Packages not yet submitted or accepted to CRAN get a red badge.

Package installation and info

• build_vignettes() automatically installs the VignetteBuilder package, if necessary (#736).

• install() and install_deps() gain a ... argument, so additional arguments can be passed to utils::install.packages() (@jimhester, #712). install_svn() optionally accepts a revision (@lev-kuznetsov, #739). install_version() now knows how to look in multiple repos (#721).

• package_deps() (and dev_package_deps()) determines all recursive dependencies and whether or not they're up-to-date (#663). Use update(package_deps("xyz")) to update out of date dependencies. This code is used in install_deps() and revdep_check() - it's slightly more aggressive than previous code (i.e. it forces you to use the latest version), which should avoid problems when you go to submit to CRAN.

• New update_packages() will install a package (and its dependencies) only if they are missing or out of date (#675).

• session_info() can now take a vector of package names, in which case it will print the version of those packages and their dependencies (#664).

Git and github

• Devtools now uses the git2r package to inspect git properties and install remote git packages with install_git(). This should be considerably more reliable than the previous strategy which involves calling the command line git client. It has two small downsides: install_git() no longer accepts additional args, and must do a deep clone when installing.

• dr_github() checks for common problems with git/github setup (#643).

• If you use git, release() now warns you if you have uncommited changes, or if you've forgotten to synchronise with the remote (#691).

• install_github() warns if repository contains submodules (@ashander, #751).

Bug fixes and minor improvements

• Previously, devtools ran all external R processes with R --vanilla. Now it only suppresses user profiles, and constructs a custom .Rprofile to override the default. Currently, this .Rprofile sets up the repos option. Among others, this enables the cyclic dependency check in devtools::release (#602, @krlmlr).

• R_BROWSER and R_PDFVIEWER environment variables are set to "false" to suppress random windows opening during checks.

• Devtools correctly identifies RTools 3.1 and 3.2 (#738), and preserves continuation lines in the DESCRIPTION (#709).

• dev_help() now uses normalizePath(). Hopefully this will make it more likely to work if you're on windows and have a space in the path.

• lint() gains a cache argument (@jimhester, #708).

• Fixed namespace issues related to stats::setNames() (#734, #772) and utils::unzip() (#761, @robertzk).

• release() now reminds you to check the existing CRAN check results page (#613) ands shows file size before uploading to CRAN (#683, @krlmlr).

• RCMD() and system_check() are now exported so they can be used by other packages. (@jimhester, #699).

• revdep_check() creates directories if needed (#759).

• system_check() combines arguments with , not , . (#753)

• test() gains an ... argument so that additional arguments can be passed to testthat::test_dir (@jimhester, #747)

• use_travis() now suggests you link to the svg icon since that looks a little sharper. Default template sets CRAN: http://cran.rstudio.com/ to enable the cyclic dependency check.

• NOT_CRAN envvar no longer overrides externally set variable.

• check(check_version = TRUE) also checks spelling of the DESCRIPTION; if no spell checker is installed, a warning is given (#784, @krlmlr).

devtools 1.7.0

Improve reverse dependency checking

Devtools now supports a new and improved style of revdep checking with use_revdep(). This creates a new directory called revdep which contains a check.R template. Run this template to check all reverse dependencies, and save summarised results to check/summary.md. You can then check this file into git, making it much easier to track how reverse dependency results change between versions. The documentation for revdep_check() is much improved, and should be more useful (#635)

I recommend that you specify a library to use when checking with options("devtools.revdep.libpath"). (This should be a directory that already exists). This should be difference from your default library to keep the revdep environment isolated from your development environment.

I've also tweaked the output of revdep_maintainers() so it's easier to copy and paste into an email (#634). This makes life a little easier pre-release.

New helpers

• lint() runs lintr::lint_package() to check style consistency and errors in a package. (@jimhester, #694)

• use_appveyor() sets up a package for testing with AppVeyor (@krlmlr, #549).

• use_cran_comments() creates a cran-comments.md template and adds it to .Rbuildignore to help with CRAN submissions. (#661)

• use_git_hook() allows you to easily add a git hook to a package.

• use_readme_rmd() sets up a template to generate a README.md from a README.Rmd with knitr.

Minor improvements

• Deprecated doc_clean argument to check() has been removed.

• Initial package version in create() is now 0.0.0.9000 (#632). create() and create_description() checks that the package name is valid (#610).

• load_all() runs roxygen2::update_collate() before loading code. This ensures that files are sourced in the way you expect, as defined by roxygen @include tags. If you don't have any @include tags, the collate will be not be touched (#623).

• session_info() gains include_base argument to also display loaded/attached base packages (#646).

• release() no longer asks if you've read the CRAN policies since the CRAN submission process now asks the same question (#692).

  release(check = TRUE) now runs some additional custom checks. These include:

  • Checking that you don't depend on a development version of a package.

  • Checking that the version number has exactly three components (#633).

  release() now builds packages without the --no-manual switch, both for checking and for actually building the release package (#603, @krlmlr). build() gains an additional argument manual, defaulting to FALSE, and check() gains ... unmodified to build().

• use_travis() now sets an environment variable so that any WARNING will also cause the build to fail (#570).

• with_debug() and compiler_flags() set CFLAGS etc instead of PKG_CFLAGS. PKG_* are for packages to use, the raw values are for users to set. (According to http://cran.rstudio.com/doc/manuals/r-devel/R-exts.html#Using-Makevars)

• New setup() works like create() but assumes an existing, not necessarily empty, directory (#627, @krlmlr).

Bug fixes

• When installing a pull request, install_github() now uses the repository associated with the pull request's branch (and not the repository of the user who created the pull request) (#658, @krlmlr).

• missing_s3() works once again (#672)

• Fixed scoping issues with unzip().

• load_code() now executes the package's code with the package's root as working directory, just like R CMD build et al. (#640, @krlmlr).

devtools 1.6.1

• Don't set non-portable compiler flags on Solaris.

• The file template.Rproj is now correctly installed and the function use_rstudio works as it should. (#595, @hmalmedal)

• The function use_rcpp will now create the file src/.gitignore with the correct wildcards. (@hmalmedal)

• The functions test, document, load_all, build, check and any function that applies to some package directory will work from subdirectories of a package (like the "R" or "inst/tests" directories). (#616, @robertzk)

devtools 1.6

Tool templates and create()

• create() no longer generates man/ directory - roxygen2 now does this automatically. It also no longer generates an package-level doc template. If you want this, use use_package_doc(). It also makes a dummy namespace so that you can build & reload without running document() first.

• New use_data() makes it easy to include data in a package, either in data/ (for exported datasets) or in R/sysdata.rda (for internal data). (#542)

• New use_data_raw() creates data-raw/ directory for reproducible generation of data/ files (#541).

• New use_package() allows you to set dependencies (#559).

• New use_package_doc() sets up an Roxygen template for package-level docs.

• New use_rcpp() sets up a package to use Rcpp.

• use_travis() now figures out your github username and repo so it can construct the markdown for the build image. (#546)

• New use_vignette() creates a draft vignette using Rmarkdown (#572).

• renamed add_rstudio_project() to use_rstudio(), add_travis() to use_travis(), add_build_ignore() to use_build_ignore(), and add_test_infrastructure() to use_testthat() (old functions are aliased to new)

The release process

• You can add arbitrary extra questions to release() by defining a function release_questions() in your package. Your release_questions() should return a character vector of questions to ask (#451).

• release() uses new CRAN submission process, as implemented by submit_cran() (#430).

Package installation

• All install_* now use the same code and store much useful metadata. Currently only session_info() takes advantage of this information, but it will allow the development of future tools like generic update functions.

• Vignettes are no longer installed by default because they potentally require all suggested packages to also be installed. Use build_vignettes = TRUE to force building and to install all suggested packages (#573).

• install_bitbucket() has been bought into alignment with install_github(): this means you can now specify repos with the compact username/repo@ref syntax. The username is now deprecated.

• install_git() has been simplified and many of the arguments have changed names for consistency with metadata for other package installs.

• install_github() has been considerably improved:

  • username is deprecated - please include the user in the repo name: rstudio/shiny, hadley/devtools etc.

  • dependencies = TRUE is no longer forced (regression in 1.5) (@krlmlr, #462).

  • Deprecated parameters auth_user, branch, pull and password have all been removed.

  • New host argument which allows you to install packages from github enterprise (#410, #506).

  • The GitHub API is used to download archive file (@krlmlr, #466) - this makes it less likely to break in the future.

  • To download a specified pull request, use ref = github_pull(...) (@krlmlr, #509). To install the latest release, use "user/repo@*release" or ref = github_release() (@krlmlr, #350).

• install_gitorious() has been bought into alignment with install_github(): this means you can now specify repos with the compact username/repo@ref syntax. You must now always supply user (project) name and repo.

• install_svn() lets you install an R package from a subversion repository (assuming you have subversion installed).

• decompress() and hence install_url() now work when the downloaded file decompresses without additional top-level directory (#537).

Other minor improvements and bug fixes

• If you're using Rstudio, and you you're trying to build a binary package without the necessary build tools, Rstudio will prompt to download and install the right thing. (#488)

• Commands are no longer run with LC_ALL=C - this no longer seems necessary (#507).

• build(binary = TRUE) creates an even-more-temporary package library avoid conflicts (#557).

• check_dir() no longer fails on UNC paths (#522).

• check_devtools() also checks for dependencies on development versions of packages (#534).

• load_all() no longer fails on partial loading of a package containing S4 or RC classes (#577).

• On windows, find_rtools() is now run on package load, not package attach.

• help(), ?, and system.file() are now made available when a package is loaded with load_all(), even if the devtools package isn't attached.

• httr 0.3 required (@krlmlr, #466).

• load_all() no longer gives an error when objects listed as exports are missing.

• Shim added for library.dynam.unload().

• loaded_packages() now returns package name and path it was loaded from. (#486)

• The parenvs() function has been removed from devtools, because is now in the pryr package.

• missing_s3() uses a better heuristic for determining if a function is a S3 method (#393).

• New session_info() provides useful information about your R session. It's a little more focussed than sessionInfo() and includes where packages where installed from (#526).

• rstudioapi package moved from suggests to imports, since it's always needed (it's job is to figure out if rstudio is available, #458)

• Implemented own version utils::unzip() that throws error if command fails and doesn't print unneeded messages on non-Windows platforms (#540).

• Wrote own version of write.dcf() that doesn't butcher whitespace and fieldnames.

Removed functionality

• The fresh argument to test() has been removed - this is best done by the editor since it can run the tests in a completely clean environment by starting a new R session.

• compile_dll() can now build packages located in R's tempdir() directory (@richfitz, #531).

devtools 1.5

Four new functions make it easier to add useful infrastructure to packages:

• add_test_infrastructure() will create test infrastructure for a new package. It is called automatically from test() if no test directories are found, the session is interactive and you agree.

• add_rstudio_project() adds an Rstudio project file to your package. create() gains an rstudio argument which will automatically create an Rstudio project in the package directory. It defaults to TRUE: if you don't use Rstudio, just delete the file.

• add_travis() adds a basic travis template to your package. .travis.yml is automatically added to .Rbuildignore to avoid including it in the built package.

• add_build_ignore() makes it easy to add files to .Rbuildignore, correctly escaping special characters

Two dependencies were incremented:

• devtools requires at least R version 3.0.2.

• document() requires at least roxygen2 version 3.0.0.

Minor improvements

• build_win() now builds R-release and R-devel by default (@krlmlr, #438). It also gains parameter args, which is passed on to build() (@krlmlr, #421).

• check_doc() now runs document() automatically.

• install() gains thread argument which allows you to install multiple packages in parallel (@mllg, #401). threads argument to check_cran() now defaults to getOption("Ncpus")

• install_deps(deps = T) no longer installs all dependencies of dependencies (#369).

• install_github() now prefers personal access tokens supplied to auth_token rather than passwords (#418, @jeroenooms).

• install_github() now defaults to dependencies = TRUE so you definitely get all the packages you need to build from source.

• devtools supplies its own version of system.file() so that when the function is called from the R console, it will have special behavior for packages loaded with devtools.

• devtools supplies its own version of help and ?, which will search devtools-loaded packages as well as normally-loaded packages.

Bug fixes

• check_devtools() no longer called by check() because the relevant functionality is now included in R CMD CHECK and it was causing false positives (#446).

• install_deps(TRUE) now includes packages listed in VignetteBuilder (#396)

• build() no longer checks for pdflatex when building vignettes, as many modern vignettes don't need it (#398). It also uses --no-build-vignettes for >3.0.0 compatibility (#391).

• release() does a better job of opening your email client if you're inside of Rstudio (#433).

• check() now correctly reports the location of the R CMD check output when called with a custom check_dir. (Thanks to @brentonk)

• check_cran() records check times for each package tested.

• Improved default DESCRIPTION file created by create_description(). (Thanks to @ncarchedi, #428)

• Fixed bug in install_github() that prevented installing a pull request by supplying repo = "username/repo#pull". (#388)

• explicitly specify user agent when querying user name and ref for pull request in install_github. (Thanks to Kirill Müller, #405)

• install_github() now removes blank lines found in a package DESCRIPTION file, protecting users from the vague error: contains a blank line error. (#394)

• with_options() now works, instead of throwing an error (Thanks to @krlmlr, #434)

devtools 1.4.1

• Fixed bug in wd() when path was ommitted. (#374)

• Fixed bug in dev_help() that prevented it from working when not using Rstudio.

• source_gist() respects new github policy by sending user agent (hadley/devtools)

• install_github() now takes repo names of the form [username/]repo[/subdir][@ref|#pull] - this is now the recommended form to specify username, subdir, ref and/or pull for install_github. (Thanks to Kirill Müller, #376)

devtools 1.4

Installation improvements

• install() now respects the global option keep.source.pkgs.

• install() gains a build_vignettes which defaults to TRUE, and ensures that vignettes are built even when doing a local install. It does this by forcing local = FALSE if the package has vignettes, so R CMD build can follow the usual process. (#344)

• install_github() now takes repo names of the form username/repo - this is now the recommended form for install_github if your username is not hadley ;)

• install_github() now adds details on the source of the installed package (e.g. repository, SHA1, etc.) to the package DESCRIPTION file. (Thanks to JJ Allaire)

• Adjusted install_version() to new meta data structure on CRAN. (Thanks to Kornelius Rohmeyer)

• Fixed bug so that install_version() works with version numbers that contain hyphens. (Thanks to Kornelius Rohmeyer)

• install_deps() is now exported, making it easier to install the dependencies of a package.

Other minor improvements

• build(binary = TRUE) now no longer installs the package as a side-effect. (#335)

• build_github_devtools() is a new function which makes it easy for Windows users to upgrade to the development version of devtools.

• create_description() does a better job of combining defaults and user specified options. (#332)

• install() also installs the dependencies that do not have the required versions; besides, the argument dependencies now works like install.packages() (in previous versions, it was essentially c("Depends", "Imports", "LinkingTo")) (thanks, Yihui Xie, #355)

• check() and check_cran() gain new check_dir argument to control where checking takes place (#337)

• check_devtools() no longer incorrectly complains about a vignettes/ directory

• Decompression of zip files now respects getOption("unzip") (#326)

• dev_help will now use the Rstudio help pane, if you're using a recent version of Rstudio (#322)

• Release is now a little bit smarter: if it's a new package, it'll ask you to read and agree to the CRAN policies; it will only ask about dependencies if it has any.

• source_url() (and source_gist()) accept SHA1 prefixes.

• source_gist() uses the github api to reliably locate the raw gist. Additionally it now only attempts to source files with .R or .r extensions, and gains a quiet argument. (#348)

• Safer installation of source packages, which were previously extracted directly into the temp directory; this could be a problem if directory names collide. Instead, source packages are now extracted into unique subdirectories.

devtools 1.3

Changes to best practices

• The documentation for many devtools functions has been considerably expanded, aiming to give the novice package developer more hints about what they should be doing and why.

• load_all() now defaults to reset = TRUE so that changes to the NAMESPACE etc are incorporated. This makes it slightly slower (but hopefully not noticeably so), and generally more accurate, and a better simulation of the install + restart + reload cycle.

• test() now looks in both inst/test and tests/testthat for unit tests. It is recommended to use tests/testthat because it allows users to choose whether or not to install test. If you move your tests from inst/tests to tests/testthat, you'll also need to change tests/test-all.R to run test_check() instead of test_package(). This change requires testthat 0.8 which will be available on CRAN shortly.

• New devtools guarantee: if because of a devtools bug, a CRAN maintainer yells at you, I'll send you a hand-written apology note. Just forward me the email and your address.

New features

• New install_local() function for installing local package files (as zip, tar, tgz, etc.) (Suggested by landroni)

• parse_deps(), which parses R's package dependency strings, is now exported.

• All package and user events (e.g. load, unload, attach and detach) are now called in the correct place.

Minor improvements and bug fixes

• build() gains args parameter allowing you to add additional arbitrary arguments, and check() gains similar build_args parameter.

• install_git gains git_arg parameter allowing you to add arbitrary additional arguments.

• Files are now loaded in a way that preserves srcreferences - this means that you will get much better locations on error messages, which should considerably aid debugging.

• Fixed bug in build_vignettes() which prevented files in inst/doc from being updated

• as.package() no longer uses the full path, which should make for nicer error messages.

• More flexibility when installing package dependencies with the dependencies argument to install_*() (thanks to Martin Studer)

• The deprecated show_rd() function has now been removed.

• install_bitbucket() gains auth_user and password params so that you can install from private repos (thanks to Brian Bolt)

• Better git detection on windows (thanks to Mikhail Titov)

• Fix bug so that document() will automatically create man/ directory

• Default DESCRIPTION gains LazyData: true

• create_description() now checks that the directory is probably a package by looking for R/, data/ or src/ directories

• Rolled back required R version from 3.0 to 2.15.

• Add missing import for digest()

• Bump max compatible version of R with RTools 3.0, and add details for RTools 3.1

devtools 1.2

Better installation

• install gains a local option for installing the package from the local package directory, rather than from a built tar.gz. This is now used by default for all package installations. If you want to guarantee a clean build, run local = FALSE

• install now uses option devtools.install.args for default installation arguments. This allows you to set any useful defaults (e.g. --no-multiarch) in your Rprofile.

• install_git gains branch argument to specify branch or tag (Fixes #255)

Clean sessions

• run_examples and test gain a fresh argument which forces them to run in a fresh R session. This completely insulates the examples/tests from your current session but means that interactive code (like browser()) won't work.(Fixes #258)

• New functions eval_clean and evalq_clean make it easy to evaluate code in a clean R session.

• clean_source loses the vanilla argument (which did not work) and gains a quiet argument

New features

• source_url and source_gist now allow you to specify a sha, so you can make sure that files you source from the internet don't change without you knowing about it. (Fixes #259)

• build_vignettes builds using buildVignette() and movies/copies outputs using the same algorithm as R CMD build. This means that build_vignettes() now exactly mimics R's regular behaviour, including building non-Sweave vignettes (#277), building in the correct directory (#231), using make files (if present), and copying over extra files.

• devtools now sets best practice compiler flags: from check(), -Wall -pedantic and from load_all(), -Wall -pedantic -g -O0 -UNDEBUG. These are prefixed to existing environment variables so that you can override them if desired. (Fixes #257)

• If there's no DESCRIPTION file present, load_all() will automatically create one using create_description(). You can set options in your .Rprofile to control what it contains: see package?devtools for more details.

Minor improvements

• check() now also sets environment variable _R_CHECK_CODE_DATA_INTO_GLOBALENV_ to TRUE (to match current --as-cran behaviour) (Fixes #256)

• Improved default email sent by release(), eliminating create.post() boilerplate

• revdep includes LinkingTo by default.

• Fixed regular expression problem that caused RTools 3.0.* to fail to be found on Windows.

• load_data() got an overhaul and now respects LazyData and correctly exports datasets by default (Fixes #242)

• with_envvar gains the option to either replace, prefix or suffix existing environmental variables. The default is to replace, which was the previous behaviour.

• check_cran includes sessionInfo() in the summary output (Fixes #273)

• create() gains a check argument which defaults to FALSE.

• with_env will be deprecated in 1.2 and removed in 1.3

• When load_all() calls .onAttach() and .onLoad(), it now passes the lib path to those functions.

devtools 1.1

• source_gist() has been updated to accept new gist URLs with username. (Fixes #247)

• test() and document() now set environment variables, including NOT_CRAN.

• Test packages have been renamed to avoid conflicts with existing packages on CRAN. This bug prevented devtools 1.0 from passing check on CRAN for some platforms.

• Catch additional case in find_rtools(): previously installed, but directory empty/deleted (Fixes #241)

devtools 1.0

Improvements to package loading

• Rcpp attributes are now automatically compiled during build.

• Packages listed in depends are require()d (Fixes #161, #178, #192)

• load_all inserts a special version of system.file into the package's imports environment. This tries to simulate the behavior of base::system.file but gives modified results because the directory structure of installed packages and uninstalled source packages is different. (Fixes #179). In other words, system.file should now just work even if the package is loaded with devtools.

• Source files are only recompiled if they've changed since the last run, and the recompile will be clean (--preclean) if any exported header files have changed. (Closes #224)

• The compilation process now performs a mock install instead of using R CMD SHLIB. This means that Makevars and makefiles will now be respected and generally there should be fewer mismatches between load_all and the regular install and reload process.

• S4 classes are correctly loaded and unloaded.

Windows

• Rtools detection on windows has been substantially overhauled and should both be more reliable, and when it fails give more information about what is wrong with your install.

• If you don't have rtools installed, devtools now automatically sets the TAR environment variable to internal so you can still build packages.

Minor features

• check_cran now downloads packages from cran.rstudio.com.

• check() now makes the CRAN version check optional, and off by default. The release() function still checks the version number against CRAN.

• In check(), it is optional to require suggested packages, using the force_suggests option.

• When check() is called, the new default behavior is to not delete existing .Rd files from man/. This behavior can be set with the "devtools.cleandoc" option.

• install_bitbucket() now always uses lowercase repo names. (Thanks to mnel)

• New function with_lib(), which runs an expression code with a library path prepended to the existing libpaths. It differs slightly from with_libpaths(), which replaces the existing libpaths.

• New function install_git() installs a package directly from a git repository. (Thanks to David Coallier)

• If pdflatex isn't available, don't try to build vignettes with install() or check(). (Fixes #173)

• install_github() now downloads from a new URL, to reflect changes on how files are hosted on GitHub.

• build() now has a vignettes option to turn off rebuilding vignettes.

• install(quick=TRUE) now builds the package without rebuilding vignettes. (Fixes #167)

• All R commands called from devtools now have the environment variable NOT_CRAN set, so that you can perform tasks when you know your code is definitely not running on CRAN. (Closes #227)

• Most devtools functions can a quiet argument that suppresses output. This is particularly useful for testing.

Bug fixes

• Fixed path issue when looking for Rtools on windows when registry entry is not present. (Fixes #201)

• Reloading a package that requires a forced-unload of the namespace now works.

• When reloading a package that another loaded package depends on, if there was an error loading the code, devtools would print out something about an error in unloadNamespace, which was confusing. It now gives more useful errors.

• An intermittent error in clear_topic_index related to using rm() has been fixed. (Thanks to Gregory Jefferis)

• revdep() now lists "Suggests" packages, in addition to "Depends" and "Imports".

• revdep_check() now correctly passes the recursive argument to revdep().

• The collection of check results at the end of check_cran() previously did not remove existing results, but now it does.

• When a package is loaded with load_all(), it now passes the name of the package to the .onLoad() function. (Thanks to Andrew Redd)

devtools 0.8.0

New features

• create function makes it easier to create a package skeleton using devtools standards.

• install_github() can now install from a pull request -- it installs the branch referenced in the pull request.

• install_github now accepts auth_user and password arguments if you want to install a package in a private github repo. You only need to specify auth_user if it's not your package (i.e. it's not your username) (Fixes #116)

• new dev_help function replaces show_rd and makes it easy to get help on any topic in a development package (i.e. a package loaded with load_all) (Fixes #110)

• dev_example runs the examples for one in-development package. (Fixes #108)

• build_vignettes now looks in modern location for vignettes (vignettes/) and warn if vignettes found in old location (inst/doc). Building now occurs in a temporary directory (to avoid polluting the package with build artefacts) and only final pdf files are copied over.

• new clean_vignettes function to remove pdfs in inst/doc that were built from vignettes in vignettes/

• load_all does a much much better job at simulating package loading (see LOADING section). It also compiles and loads C/C++/Fortran code.

• unload() is now an exported function, which unloads a package, trying harder than just detach. It now also unloads DLLs. (Winston Chang. Fixes #119)

• run_examples now has parameters show, test, run to control which of \dontrun{}, \dontshow{}, \donttest{} and \testonly{} are commented out. The strict parameter has been removed since it is no longer necessary because load_all can respect namespaces. (Fixes #118)

• build(), check(), install() etc now run R in --vanilla mode which prevents it from reading any of your site or personal configuration files. This should prevent inconsistencies between the environment in which the package is run between your computer and other computers (e.g. the CRAN server) (Fixes #145)

• All system R command now print the full command used to make it easier to understand what's going on.

Package paths

• as.package no longer uses ~/.Rpackages.

• as.package provides more informative error messages when path does not exist, isn't a directory, or doesn't contain a DESCRIPTION file.

• New function inst() takes the name of a package and returns the installed path of that package. (Winston Chang. Fixes #130). This makes it possible to use devtools functions (e.g. unload) with regular installed packages, not just in-development source packages.

• New function devtest() returns paths to an internal testing packages in devtools.

Loading

• Development packages are now loaded into a namespace environment, namespace:xxxx, and then the objects namespace are copied to the package environment, package:xxxx. This more accurately simulates how packages are normally loaded. However, all of the objects (not just the exported ones) are still copied to the package environment. (Winston Chang. Fixes #3, #60, and #125)

• Packages listed in Imports and Depends are now loaded into an imports environment, with name attribute "imports:xxxx", which is the parent of the namespace environment. The imports environment is in turn a child of the namespace:base environment, which is a child of the global environment. This more accurately simulates how packages are normally loaded. These packages previously were loaded and attached. (Winston Chang. Fixes #85)

• The NAMESPACE file is now used for loading imports, instead of the DESCRIPTION file. Previously, load_all loaded all objects from the packages listed in DESCRIPTION. Now it loads packages (and, when when 'importfrom' is used, specific objects from packages) listed in NAMESPACE. This more closely simulates normal package loading. It still checks version numbers of packages listed in DESCRIPTION. (Winston Chang)

• load_all can now be used to properly reload devtools. It does this by creating a copy of the devtools namespace environment, and calling load_all from that environment. (Winston Chang)

• The .onLoad and .onAttach functions for a development package are now both called when loading a package for the first time, or with reset=TRUE, and the order more correctly simulates normal package loading (create the namespace, call .onLoad, copy objects to the package environment, and then call .onAttach). (Winston Chang)

• load_all will now throw a warning if a dependency package does not satisfy the version requirement listed in DESCRIPTION. (Winston Chang. Fixes #109)

• The package environment now has a 'path' attribute, similar to a package loaded the normal way. (Winston Chang)

• load_all now has an option export_all. When set to TRUE, only the objects listed as exports in NAMESPACE are exported. (Winston Chang)

• load_all now compiles C files in the /src directory. (Winston Chang)

• New functions compile_dll() and clean_dll(), which compile C/C++/ Fortan source code, and clean up the compiled objects, respectively. (Winston Chang. Fixes #131)

Bug fixes

• load_code now properly skips missing files. (Winston Chang)

• Add --no-resave-data to default build command.

• The subject line of the email created by release is now "CRAN submission [package] [version]", per CRAN repository policy.

• install_bitbucket properly installs zip files of projects stored in Mercurial repositories. (Winston Chang. Fixes #148)

• build now builds vignettes because install does not. (Fixes #155)

Introspection

• New function loaded_packages(), which returns the names of packages that are loaded and attached.

• Packages loaded with load_all now store devtools metadata in their namespace environment, in a variable called .__DEVTOOLS__. This can be accessed with the dev_meta function. (Winston Chang. Fixes #128)

• dev_mode now stores the path it uses in option dev_path. That makes it easy for other applications to detect when it is on and to act accordingly.

• New function parse_ns_file(), which parses a NAMESPACE file for a package.

• New function parenvs(), which parents the parent environments of an object. (Winston Chang)

devtools 0.7.1

• bump dependency to R 2.15

• load_code now also looks for files ending in .q - this is not recommended, but is needed for some older packages

devtools 0.7

Installation

• install_bitbucket installs R packages on bitbucket.

• install now uses --with-keep.source to make debugging a little easier.

• All remote install functions give better error messages in the case of http errors (Fixes #82).

• install has new quick option to make package installation faster, by sacrificing documentation, demos and multi-architecture binaries. (Fixes #77)

• install_url, install_github and install_gitorious gain a subdir argument which makes it possible to install packages that are contained within a sub-directory of a repository or compressed file. (Fixes #64)

Checking

• with_debug function temporarily sets env vars so that compilation is performed with the appropriate debugging flags set. Contributed by Andrew Redd.

• revdep, revdep_maintainers and revdep_check for calculating reverse dependencies, finding their maintainers and running R CMD check. (Fixes #78)

• check_cran has received a massive overhaul: it now checks multiple packages, installs dependencies (in user specified library), and parse check output to extract errors and warnings

• check uses new --as-cran option to make checking as close to CRAN as possible (fixes #68)

Other new features

• devtools now uses options devtools.path to set the default path to use with devmode, and github.user to set the default user when installing packages from github.

• if no package supplied, and no package has been worked with previously, all functions now will try the working directory. (Fixes #87)

• on windows, devtools now looks in the registry to find where Rtools is installed, and does a better a job of locating gcc. (Contributed by Andrew Redd)

• show_rd passes ... on to Rd2txt - this is useful if you're checking how build time \Sexprs are generated.

• A suite of with functions that allow you to temporarily alter the environment in which code is run: in_dir, with_collate, with_locale, with_options, with_path, ... (Fixes #89)

• release ask more questions and randomises correct answers so you really need to read them (Fixes #79)

• source_gist now accepts default url such as "https://gist.github.com/nnn"

• New system path manipulation functions, get_path, set_path, add_path and on_path, contributed by Andrew Redd.

• If you're on windows, devtools now suppresses the unimportant warning from CYGWIN about the dos style file paths

Bug fixes

• decompress now uses target directory as defined in the function call when expanding a compressed file. (Fixes #84)

• document is always run in a C locale so that NAMESPACE sort order is consistent across platforms.

• install now quotes libpath and build path so paths with embedded spaces work (Fixes #73 and #76)

• load_data now also loads .RData files (Fixes #81)

• install now has args argument to pass additional command line arguments on to R CMD install (replaces ... which didn't actually do anything). (Fixes #69)

• load_code does a better job of reconciling files in DESCRIPTION collate with files that actually exist in the R directory. (Fixes #14)

devtools 0.6

New features

• test function takes filter argument which allows you to restrict which tests are to be run

• check runs with example timings, as is done on CRAN. Run with new param cleanup = F to access the timings.

• missing_s3 function to help figure out if you've forgotten to export any s3 methods

• check_cran downloads and checks a CRAN package - this is useful to run as part of the testing process of your package if you want to check the dependencies of your package

• strict mode for run_examples which runs each example in a clean environment. This is much slower than the default (running in the current environment), but ensures that each example works standalone.

• dev_mode now updates prompt to indicate that it's active (Thanks to Kohske Takahashi)

• new source_url function for sourcing script on a remote server via protocols other than http (e.g. https or ftp). (Thanks to Kohske Takahashi)

• new source_gist function to source R code stored in a github gist. (Thanks to Kohske Takahashi)

• load_all now also loads all package dependencies (including suggestions) - this works around some bugs in the way that devtools attaches the development environment into the search path in a way that fails to recreate what happens normally during package loading.

Installation

• remote installation will ensure the configure file is executable.

• all external package installation functions are vectorised so you can install multiple packages at time

• new install_gitorious function install packages in gitorious repos.

• new install_url function for installing package from an arbitrary url

• include install_version function from Jeremy Stephens for installing a specific version of a CRAN package from the archive.

Better windows behaviour

• better check for OS type (thanks to Brian Ripley)

• better default paths for 64-bit R on windows (Fixes #35)

• check to see if Rtools is already available before trying to mess with the paths. (Fixes #55)

Bug fixes

• if an error occurs when calling loading R files, the cache will be automatically cleared so that all files are loaded again next time you try (Fixes #55)

• functions that run R now do so with R_LIBS set to the current .libPaths() - this will ensure that checking uses the development library if you are in development mode. R_ENVIRON_USER is set to an empty file to avoid your existing settings overriding this.

• load_data (called by load_all) will also load data defined in R files in the data directory. (Fixes #45)

• dev_mode performs some basic tests to make sure you're not setting your development library to a directory that's not already an R library. (Fixes #25)

devtools 0.5.1

• Fix error in that was causing R commands to fail on windows.

devtools 0.5

New functions

• new show_rd function that will show the development version of a help file.

Improvements and bug fixes

• external R commands always run in locale C, because that's what the CRAN severs do.

• clean_source sources an R script into a fresh R environment, ensuring that it can run independently of your current working environment. Optionally (vanilla = T), it will source in a vanilla R environment which ignores all local environment settings.

• On windows, devtools will also add the path to mingw on startup. (Thanks to pointer from Dave Lovell)

devtools 0.4

New functions

• new wd function to change the working directory to a package subdirectory.

• check_doc now checks package documentation as a whole, in the same way that R CMD check does, rather than low-level syntax checking, which is done by roxygen2. DESCRIPTION checking has been moved into load_all. check_rd` has been removed.

• build is now exported, and defaults to building in the package's parent directory. It also gains a new binary parameter controls whether a binary or a source version (with no vignettes or manuals) is built. Confusingly, binary packages are built with R CMD INSTALL.

• build_win sends your package to the R windows builder, allowing you to make a binary version of your package for windows users if you're using linux or a max (if you're using windows already, use build(binary = T))

Improvements and bug fixes

• if using .Rpackages config file, default function is used last, not first.

• on Windows, devtools now checks for the presence of Rtools on startup, and will automatically add it to the path if needed.

• document uses roxygen2 instead of roxygen. It now loads package dependency so that they're available when roxygen executes the package source code.

• document has new parameter clean which clears all roxygen caches and removes all existing man files. check now runs document in this mode.

• dev_mode will create directories recursively, and complain if it can't create them. It should also work better on windows.

• install_github now allows you to specify which branch to download, and automatically reloads package if needed.

• reload now will only reload if the package is already loaded.

• release gains check parameter that allows you to skip package check (if you've just done it.)

• test automatically reloads code so you never run tests on old code

devtools 0.3

• new bash() function that starts bash shell in package directory. Useful if you want to use git etc.

• removed inelegant update_src() since now superseded by bash()

• fix bug in ftp upload that was adding extraneous space

• build function builds package in specified directory. install, check and release now all use this function.

• build, install, check and release better about cleaning up after themselves - always try to both work in session temporary directory and delete any files/directories that they create

devtools 0.2

• install_github now uses RCurl instead of external wget to retrieve package. This should make it more robust wrt external dependencies.

• load_all will skip missing files with a warning (thanks to suggestion from Jeff Laake)

• check automatically deletes .Rcheck directory on successful completion

• Quote the path to R so it works even if there are spaces in the path.

devtools 0.1

• Check for presence of DESCRIPTION when loading packages to avoid false positives

• install now works correctly with devel_mode to install packages in your development library

• release prints news so you can more easily check it

• All R CMD xxx functions now use the current R, not the first R found on the system path.