BUILDING AN R PACKAGE

An exercise in creating, writing, documenting, and testing an R package.

Overview

This exercise involves building a package that contains R functions to read data from the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS).

1. Write R functions using roxygen2 style comments
2. Write a vignette to include in the package using knitr and R Markdown (Rmd)
3. Write tests written using testthat
4. Put package on GitHub
5. Set up the repository so that the package can be checked and built on Travis and AppVeyor

Assessment

The R package build will be a success if:

• The package contains the correct R file(s) under the /R directory
• The package contains a /man directory with corresponding documentation files
• The package contains a vignette which provides a meaningful description of the package and how it should be used
• The package has tests included in the /tests directory
• The package has a NAMESPACE file
• A README.md file with appropriate badges
• The build of this package passes on Travis and AppVeyor
• The build logs for this package on Travis and AppVeyor are free of any errors, warnings, or notes