Welcome to templateR!

templateR is a repository that allows you to quickly deploy a templated, version-controlled directory structure and an RStudio project for a new R project. templateR is the result of creating a bare-bones ProjectTemplate project and adding an RStudio project configuration file.

This isn't an R package or anything fancy like that; I'm just making available something I created to save myself time. I wanted the simplicity of being able to just clone a repo and automatically have, in a version-controlled directory, the default structure and RStudio project that I always work with when I start a new analysis project in R.

You must have the ProjectTemplate R package installed and, optionally, a copy of RStudio installed.

To use this repository, you can download and use the templateR.sh bash script (recommended) or do the following:

1. Fork this repo. You only need to do this the first time.

2. From now on, whenever you want to create a version-controlled default project structure, just clone your copy of the repo to your local directory:

   git clone https://github.com/$USER/templateR.git $REPO
   

   Note: Replace $USER with your own GitHub user name, and $REPO with whatever you want to name your local repository.

3. If you don't plan to use RStudio, change the working directory to your local repo path in R and skip to Step 6.

4. If you wish, rename the RStudio project file by renaming the file NewProject.Rproj:

   cd $REPO
   mv NewProject.Rproj $NAME   
   

   where you should replace $REPO with the path to your local repository and $NAME with the name of your RStudio project.

5. Open the project in RStudio. Click on the Project button in the upper-right-hand side of the window, then select Open Project.... Select the folder you just created above when you cloned the repository from GitHub.

6. Issue the following commands at the R console:

   library(ProjectTemplate)
   load.project()
   

7. Watch this video on using R, ProjectTemplate, RStudio, and GitHub to learn more. Happy analyzing and committing!