The goal of roxygen2md is to replace Rd syntax with Markdown in your
package’s roxygen2 documentation. The following Rd code is converted
to the Markdown equivalent:
\emph{}\bold{}and\strong{}\href{}\url{}\code{...}- Various variants of
\code{\link{...}}and\code{\link[...]{...}}(only withscope = "full", see below)
If necessary, DESCRIPTION is edited to enable Markdown in roxygen
blocks. You’ll need roxygen2 version 6.0.0 or later.
Call roxygen2md::roxygen2md() in your package’s directory, or navigate
to “Tools/Addins/Rd to Markdown” in RStudio.
The substitutions are not completely safe, please carefully examine the results!
Install from CRAN using
install.packages("roxygen2md")Get the latest development version from GitHub with:
# install.packages("pak", repos = sprintf("https://r-lib.github.io/p/pak/stable/%s/%s/%s", .Platform$pkgType, R.Version()$os, R.Version()$arch))
pak::pak("r-lib/roxygen2md")In your package directory, run
roxygen2md::roxygen2md()If you are using RStudio, choose the item “Rd to Markdown” from your “Addins” menu.
You will be guided through the process.
At any time, choose the item “Find Rd” from your “Addins” menu, or run
find_rd(), to enumerate Rd elements in your R scripts.
For larger existing packages, a three-stage workflow is recommended,
using roxygen2md(scope = "none"), "simple" and "full" in sequence:
"none"only addslist(markdown = TRUE)to theRoxygenfield inDESCRIPTION"simple"only converts elements like\code{}and\emph{}"full"runs all conversions"unlink"splits complicated\code{}tags with embedded\link{}
This helps isolating mostly automated changes from changes that require
review. After this find_rd() shows remaining Rd format artifacts that
were not handled by the conversion.
See rstudio/rmarkdown#1583 for an example conversion.
After roxygen2md(scope = "none"), interpretation of Markdown elements
is enabled. Running devtools::document() should ideally lead to
whitespace-only changes in the .Rd files, this can be verified with
git diff -w -- man or with a visual diff tool like Meld or diffuse.
Make sure that enabling of Markdown doesn’t add unwanted artifacts. (The
second commit in the example PR was necessary due to such artifacts –
the underscore has a special meaning in Markdown.)
Running roxygen2md(scope = "simple") after "none" (and running
devtools::document()) should lead to changes in R files mostly, only
very few .Rd files should be changed. Again, make sure this doesn’t
add unwanted artifacts.
Optionally, run roxygen2md(scope = "unlink") after "simple" (and
running devtools::document()). This replaces all instances of
\link{...} with .... This isn’t a valid conversion, but a helper to
split up complex instances of \code{...\link{...}...} for which no
easy-to-read translation to Markdown exists. Use a visual diff tool like
Meld or diffuse to quickly iterate through all changes and keep only
those that are intended. Run devtools::document() and commit if
necessary.
Consider inserting @seealso tags to link to functions instead. Render
the documentation with pkgdown to take
advantage of its auto-link
feature – all
functions gain automatic links without the need for further markup.
Running roxygen2md() after scope = "simple" (and running
devtools::document()) converts all \link{} expressions. This is the
trickiest part of the entire conversion. Due to the staged approach, the
changeset is reduced to a minimum. Review carefully, luckily
R CMD check catches bad links introduced in this stage.
The find_rd() functions shows positions of Rd-like comments that were
not handled by the conversion. In RStudio, a markers pane will open.
The package’s DESCRIPTION must have its Encoding field set to
UTF-8 or ASCII:
Encoding: UTF-8
If you use a different encoding, please recode your files with
recode
or a similar tool and update the Encoding field before proceeding.
Example:
recode latin1..utf8 R/*GPL-3 © Kirill Müller
Please note that the roxygen2md project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By contributing to this project, you agree to abide by its terms.