General Issue: create_blogpost.R checks for and installs packages

[bms63]

Background Information

@StefanThoma and @manciniedoardo what do you all think about check and installing packages when you create a blog post. could just be another helper file that create_blogpost calls??

packages to install

Helper program to check and install packages

check_and_install <- function(packages) {
for (package in packages) {
if (!require(package, character.only = TRUE)) {
install.packages(package, dependencies = TRUE)
library(package, character.only = TRUE)
} else {
message(paste(package, "already installed"))
}
}
message("Let's program some ADaMs!")
}

Use the function

check_and_install(c(
packages here...
))

[manciniedoardo]

sounds like a great idea @bms63 !

[bms63]

god...teal has so many dependencies...

[StefanThoma]

Why not renv?

[bms63]

I am always weary of renv it made working on admiral unnecessarily challenging for new folks.

having just installed teal and mirai and I wondering if there is a way to not have to install them for new posters - just takes forever. guess the docker image could be handy????

[StefanThoma]

I wonder if there is a way where only a select few blogposts render, plus the new one?
That way they can test their blog, and when uploaded everything renders.

[manciniedoardo]

Yeah I always temporarily delete ~40 posts to render the website!

[bms63]

This is sort of a tough one.

@cicdguy and @pawelru any recommendations?

We grew too big and have way too many blog posts! Installing all the packages takes some time and rendering all the posts take some time. This is a "beginner" blog and want to keep it simple/low barrier for folks wanting to come and write a post so some solutions (e.g. Docker) might be beyond our base.

Any ideas on how we can keep the barriers low for beginners and keep things minimal for us?

[pawelru]

I see two options: r-lib/actions/setup-r-dependencies OR r-lib/actions/setup-renv

r-lib/actions/setup-r-dependencies:

• this requires a DESCRIPTION file to read the dependencies from. You might create a dummy DESC file - it does not have to become a package. We are currently doing this trick in pharmaverse/examples. Please have a look at its DESCRIPTION file and how the action look like and its results.
• this is super fast because it is using PPM and install from binaries (instead of from source) plus it has in-build caching. Once downloaded, it would stay in cache and you won't repeat the download (unless there is a new version or cache removed). Have a look at the latest result here - ℹ No downloads are needed.

r-lib/actions/setup-renv:
This unfortunately I have never used so can't share my experience. I just know that it exists.

By any means - I do not recommend to maintain a list of packages with its dependencies (!). Some of those packages are still under development and the dependencies are in scope of a change. Let it be identified automatically. There are tools for that. And let it be a low maintenance thing from our side. (That's for mirai package discussed here - you should not care about that :) )
The list you showed is of good size to be putted in the dummy DESC file. I have all the positive experience with setup-r-dependencies so I would suggest this.

[bms63]

Thanks @pawelru - I agree we should move to a package-like structure and take advantage of some of these r-libs actions.

I am also interested in making blog contributors have a really easy time writing a post and looking at ways to help minimize setup and headaches for them. I am assuming a completely newb-like person here!