pkgdown

pkgdown is designed to make it quick and easy to build a website for your package. You can see pkgdown in action at https://pkgdown.r-lib.org: this is the output of pkgdown applied to the latest version of pkgdown. Learn more in vignette("pkgdown") or ?build_site.

Installation

# Install release version from CRAN
install.packages("pkgdown")

# Install development version from GitHub
devtools::install_github("r-lib/pkgdown")

Usage

Run pkgdown from the package directory each time you release your package:

pkgdown::build_site()

This will generate a docs/ directory. The home page will be generated from your package’s README.md, and a function reference will be generated from the documentation in the man/ directory. If you are using GitHub, the easiest way to make this your package website is to check into git, then go to settings for your repo and make sure that the GitHub pages source is set to “master branch /docs folder”. Be sure to update the URL on your github repository homepage so others can easily navigate to your new site.

To customise your site, create _pkgdown.yml and modify it as described in the documentation. You can also use pkgdown/_pkgdown.yml if you need other files to customise your site.

The package includes an RStudio add-in that you can bind to a keyboard shortcut. I recommend Cmd + Shift + W: it uses Cmd + Shift, like all other package development shortcuts, it replaces a rarely used command (close all tabs), and the W is a mnemonic for website.

In the wild

At last count, pkgdown is used by over 4,500 packages.

Here are a few examples created by contributors to pkgdown:

• bayesplot [source]: plotting functions for posterior analysis, model checking, and MCMC diagnostics.

• valr [source]: read and manipulate genome intervals and signals.

• mkin [source]: calculation routines based on the FOCUS Kinetics Report

• NMF [source]: a framework to perform non-negative matrix factorization (NMF).

Comparing the source and output of these sites is a great way to learn new pkgdown techniques.

Code of conduct

Please note that this project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms.