R help - Feb 2009 - updating contents of a package

Dear fellow R users,
I read through the "Writing R Extensions" document and am able to now
create
my own packages/libraries which so far are just well documented collections
of my own R functions. I use package.skeleton() and the tools package to
build these packages.
However, it is not clear to me how to modify and update a package after its
initial creation. How do you elegantly update e.g. the old help file when
one added an argument to a function ? How do you keep most of the existing
package structure when implementing incremental changes ?

Any help would be very useful,

Thanks,
Markus

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Hi Markus,
> I read through the "Writing R Extensions" document and am able to
now create
> my own packages/libraries which so far are just well documented collections
> of my own R functions. I use package.skeleton() and the tools package to
> build these packages.
> However, it is not clear to me how to modify and update a package after its
> initial creation. How do you elegantly update e.g. the old help file when
> one added an argument to a function ? How do you keep most of the existing
> package structure when implementing incremental changes ?
Generally speaking you will have your package in a directory we will 
call PKG_ROOT here, with (more or less) the following structure

PKG_ROOT
       `- inst
       `- man
       `- R
       `- DESCRIPTION
       `- NAMESPACE


If you want to update the package, you edit the help files, the R files,
etc. in their respective folders and when you're finished you can build, 
check and/or install the package using

R CMD build PKG_ROOT
R CMD check PKG_ROOT
R CMD INSTALL PKG_ROOT

or what is appropriate for your platform. To build
a Windows binary package, e.g. you will need

R CMD INSTALL --build PKG_ROOT

For this to work you will need R to work from
the commandline (add it to your PATH). On Windows
you also need to have installed the R
Windows Toolset provided by Duncan Murdoch at

http://www.murdoch-sutherland.com/Rtools/

If you would like to keep track of the changes
from package version to package version, you
can maintain a NEWS or ChangeLog file in the
inst/ package directory.

HTH,
Tobias

Markus Loecher <markus.loecher <at> gmail.com> writes:
> I read through the "Writing R Extensions" document and am able to
now create
> my own packages/libraries which so far are just well documented collections
> of my own R functions. I use package.skeleton() and the tools package to
> build these packages.
> However, it is not clear to me how to modify and update a package after its
> initial creation. How do you elegantly update e.g. the old help file when
> one added an argument to a function ? How do you keep most of the existing
> package structure when implementing incremental changes ?
In detail, Tobias is right. In summary: incremental changes must be made
by manual updating the files. When I did it the first time, I had no 
latex background and it reminded me of r(un)off times. After you did
it once, it's not that complex though, so bite the bullet.

Dieter