This is an example package of using Literate Programming for developing R
packages. Most R package authors probably write R code in the R scripts under
the R/ directory, and use comments to explain code. This package shows that
you do not have to develop a package in this way. You may write R code in R
Markdown documents, and extract the code to the R/ directory automatically via
knitr::purl(). At the same time, you will get a nicely formatted output
document displaying the source code chunks as well as the text/prose chunks, and
this output document can be a package vignette. Please see the package homepage
for more details: https://yihui.org/rlp/. This package is licensed under MIT,
and you are welcome to file issues or submit pull requests.
This approach is not possible (at least not easy) without a few important components in the toolchain:
- The support for non-Sweave vignettes since R 3.0.0, which has opened far more possibilities than I originally imagined;
- The RStudio IDE, which allows us to build an R package by clicking a button;
- The rmarkdown package, which generates beautiful HTML/PDF output;
- GNU make, which makes it easy to define how and when to compile a file;
Let me also thank whomever invented holidays, which is often my most productive time. Oh I cannot live without holidays.