Setup

There are several ways to use flowR. You can download and build it from source, download the accompanying docker image, or use its Visual Studio Code extension.

• 🗒️ Using the Visual Studio Code Extension
• 🐳️ Using the Docker Image
• ⚒️ Building From Scratch
• 📜 Developing for flowR

🗒️ Using the Visual Studio Code Extension

The easiest way to use flowR is to install the Visual Studio Code extension. Please check out the marketplace entry for more information.

🐳️ Using the Docker Image

You can get the image from docker hub by running:

docker pull eagleoutice/flowr

Afterward, you can test if the installation was successful by running the following (currently, there is no helper script for that):

docker run -it --rm flowr

This should drop you into flowR's read-evaluate-print loop. Enter :help to receive more information and :quit to leave. Please remember, that you have to link external directories to make them available within the running container:

⚒️ Building From Scratch

To use flowR, you need R installed and on your path. Although there are several ways to do so, there is nothing wrong with installing R with the help of your favorite package manager or directly from the website.^<1> For 🪟 Windows, see here for an explanation on how to add R to your path variable.

Furthermore, you need the node package manager (for Linux, we recommend using nvm).

After cloning the repository,^<2> you can install the dependencies with:

npm i

After that, you should be fine! You may test flowR's command-line interface by running the following from the cli directory:

npm run slicer -- --criterion "12@product" test/testfiles/example.R

The output should look similar to this:

product <- 1
N <- 10
for(i in 1:(N-1)) product <- product * i
cat("Product:", product, "\n")

At the time of writing this, there is currently no page for frequently encountered errors. So just message me in case of problems.

📜 Developing for flowR

If you want to develop for flowR, see the core wiki page. For details on how to contribute, please refer to the CONTRIBUTING.md in the repository.

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<1>: Currently, flowR is only tested with R versions 4.x.

<2>: We use git-lfs to store larger files, especially for the wiki pages. So if you want to work on these parts, make sure to have it set-up (see the CONTRIBUTING.md in the repository for more information).