Read it in: Français.
Will Landau recently introduced the R multiverse, a new way to publish R packagesduring an rOpenSci community call.
After that event, a coworking The session allowed for even more discussion between Will, his R-multiverse fellow administrators Jeroen Ooms and Maëlle Salmon, and community members.
A key mission during that coworking session was to submit packages live to the R multiverse! Following the instructionsAny package manager who wants to submit their software to the community repository must:
- create a GitHub or GitLab release of their package;
- open a Pull Request to the contributions GitHub repository, adding a text file containing the URL to the repository.
Will also shared an R function that allows you to perform R-multiverse packet checks locally before sending: multiverse.internals::review_package().
Three packages were submitted during the coworking session!
Parcel submissions
belt, to get weather data from ASOS stations (airports) via the Iowa Environment Mesonet.
I submitted mine belt package which has access to airport weather data even if it is also distributed on CRAN: I wanted to explore different publishing venues. Because the automatic checks (for example of the license) passed and because I am a public member of a GitHub organization trusted by the multiverse (ropensci), my PR was automatically merged.
Read more about belt.
geotargets, which extends targets to work with geospatial data formats
Eric R. Scott filed it geotargets package that extends targets to work with geospatial data formats, such as rasters and vectors (e.g. shapefiles). Erik is co-author geotargets alongside Nick Tierney and Andrew Brown, but Nick is the main maintainer. However, it’s fine that Eric submitted the package instead of Nick. With R-multiverse you can even contribute packages that you didn’t write at allas long as the license allows it clear permission to distribute and modify the code.
Read more about geotargets.
Weathercan, to find and download historical weather data from Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC).
Steffi LaZerte submitted her weather packagealso a weather package but for Canada! Steffi wondered if it made sense to submit the weather report before making some repairs and improvements she had planned in the coming weeks. Turns out, yes, it makes sense! Because the multiverse automatically picks up the latest release. Steffi just needs to remember to make a new release after improving Weathercan.
Read more about weather.
What’s next for those packages?
Now that these packages have arrived, they will be distributed via the community warehouse. It’s like a taste of new releases.
In a few weeks, when R-multiverse starts building the next one production snapshotthey are checked together with other packages. When they’re ready to go, their release at that point will be the one built into the production. If there are problems, the administrator can still push solutions.
As long as these packages are listed in the R multiverse, they will participate in the quarterly production snapshots. The maintainers just need to keep making releases (a good practice anyway) and the status of their package on the multiverse.
To let the package users know that they can install the package from the community or the production repositories, package maintainers should update the installation instructions in their package README. They would also have one license plate.
What’s next for the R multiverse?
After the posit conf talk, the rOpenSci community call and the rOpenSci coworking session, the R multiverse aims to increase participation in its system to strengthen and diversify it. New package submissions are welcome, just like that questions and feature requests. You can also sign up for one package moderator help process new submissions.
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