Suggestion: adding markers to the output of devtools::spell_check()

[maelle]

Context: when using e.g. goodpractice::gp() or lintr::package_lint() the output can be seen in the Markers pane of RStudio. That way when double-clicking on a remark one lands at the right line of the right file which makes editing easier.

I wonder if a similar functionality could be implemented for devtools::spell_check()? I do realize that it has an added difficulty: the current output of devtools::spell_check() gives the line numbers and files where the typos were found, which is in .Rd while the file one would like to edit is (most often) a .R.

[jimhester]

This is a good idea!

I don't there is a way to map Rd output back to the roxygen comment, as the relationship is not one to one.

However an alternative would be modifying devtools::spell_check() to search roxygen comment lines (#') in .R files as well / in place of .Rd. This is generally more useful anyway because it tells you what needs to be edited. Probably the easiest way to do this is to use a regex that blanks out non-roxygen comment lines, then run the spell check function on those files.

rstudioapi::sourceMarkers() is the function that can be called to add markers to the marker pane.

[AmundsenJunior]

In trying to test this, I found that spelling, called from spell-check.R, is only a "Suggests" not "Required" package. Calling devtools::spell_check() failed because this pkg was missing. Should it be moved to "Required"?

[jimhester]

No, it is that way by design, we try to keep the number of "hard" dependencies relatively low for devtools. The spelling package is only required for the spell_check() function, so it is not installed by default.

We could add a call to check_suggested("spelling") to spell_check() however, which would give you a more useful error message, and prompt to install the package if it is not installed.

[hadley]

Given that this has now been open for ~5 years, I think it's unlikely we're going to implement it. Additionally, it feels less important now that RStudio has inline spelling checking.