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Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

devtools 2.4.5

  • check(cleanup =) was deprecated in devtools v1.11.0 (2016-04-12) and was made defunct in v2.4.4 (2022-07-20). The documentation is more clear now about recommended alternatives.

  • check(check_dir = NULL) is the new default, to align with the default behaviour of the underlying rcmdcheck::rcmdcheck().

  • check(cran = TRUE) sets the env var _R_CHECK_PACKAGES_USED_IGNORE_UNUSED_IMPORTS_ to FALSE, in order to surface the "Namespace in Imports field not imported from" NOTE. This only applies to R >= 4.2, due to favorable changes in the behaviour of R CMD check --as-cran (#2459).

  • test_active_file() passes the package onto to testthat so it can correctly set the TESTTHAT_PKG envvar (#2470).

  • test() and test_active_file() once again work with testthat itself.

devtools 2.4.4

CRAN release: 2022-07-20

  • install(reload = TRUE) now calls pkgload::unregister() instead of pkload::unload() (#2349). This allows the package to keep functioning if it is still in use in the R session (e.g. through event handlers).

  • test() no longer calls load_all() twice. test_active_file() now calls load_all() via testthat.

  • aspell_env_var() does a better job of matching R CMD check behaviour, which is only to use aspell, not hunspell or ispell (#2376).

  • Installing devtools now installs pkgdown, profvis, bench, miniUI, and urlchecker, ensuring that you have everything needed for package development (#2388).

  • dev_sitrep() has been updated for the calendar-based version number scheme adopted by the RStudio IDE in September 2021 (#2397, #2410).

devtools 2.4.3

CRAN release: 2021-11-30

devtools 2.4.2

CRAN release: 2021-06-07

  • check_man() now works with R versions 4.1+ (#2354)

  • test_active_file() now again works on windows projects stored under the user’s home directory (~) (#2355)

  • document(quiet = TRUE) now works without failure on windows (#2351)

  • Minor test failure on R 4.2 has been fixed.

  • New Rstudio addin for run_examples() (#2358)

devtools 2.4.1

CRAN release: 2021-05-05

devtools 2.4.0

CRAN release: 2021-04-07

Breaking changes and deprecated functions

Re-licensing

  • devtools is now released under a MIT license (#2326)

Minor improvements and fixes

devtools 2.3.2

CRAN release: 2020-09-18

  • Fix for compatibility with withr 2.3.0

devtools 2.3.1

CRAN release: 2020-07-21

  • check_win_*() function now resets the email to the original email after execution, this bug was fixed and crept back in (@muschellij2, #2152).

  • run_examples() arguments run and test are deprecated in favor of the (hopefully) more clear run_dontrun and run_donttest (pkgload/#107).

  • Previously deprecated functions dr_devtools() and dr_github() have been removed.

  • Documentation has been synced with remotes 2.2.0

devtools 2.3.0

CRAN release: 2020-04-10

  • build() now errors with a more informative error message when passed an invalid pkg. (#2177)

  • New build_rmd() can build any .Rmd file in a clean session.

  • dev_sitrep() now works correctly when R is out of date (#2204)

devtools 2.2.2

CRAN release: 2020-02-17

devtools 2.2.1

CRAN release: 2019-09-24

  • test() now sets the collation order to C before running, which matches the behavior of tests when run with R CMD check (#2121)

  • New options("devtools.ellipsis_action") option added to control the action of ellipsis in devtools. This should be one of

    • rlang::abort - to emit an error if arguments are unused
    • rlang::warn - to emit a warning if arguments are unused
    • rlang::inform - to emit a message if arguments are unused
    • rlang::signal - to emit a message if arguments are unused Using rlang::signal will produce no output unless the custom condition is caught, so it is the best way to retain backwards compatibility with devtools behavior prior to 2.2.0. The default behavior was also changed to issue a warning rather than an error if any arguments are unused, as there are some cases where devtools does not need to install the package, so unused arguments are false positives (#2109).

  • install() now throws an error when it fails, as intended (#2120)

  • install() now again reloads and re-attaches packages if they were previously loaded (#2111).

  • release() no longer calls the deprecated dr_devtools() (#2105)

  • test() now explicitly passes stop_on_failure = FALSE to testthat::test_dir() (@jameslamb, #2099)

devtools 2.2.0

CRAN release: 2019-09-07

New Features

  • create() added back, the RStudio IDE uses create() in the create packages dialog, so removing it in version 2.1.0 broke old versions of the IDE.

  • New dev_sitrep() function to return information about your development environment and diagnose common problems. The former functions dr_devtools() and dr_github() have been deprecated. (#1970)

  • All functions taking ... now use the ellipsis package. This catches errors when arguments are misspelled or incorrectly specified (#2016)

Minor improvements and fixes

  • build_vignettes() now correctly installs the vignette builder if it is not already installed (#2089).

  • dev_sitrep() now uses the same endpoint to detect the current RStudio version as the IDE (#2050).

  • document() gains a quiet parameter, to silence output and check() now passes its quiet argument to it (#1986).

  • Add the DT package as a dependency, so that test_coverage() and test_coverage_file() work without having to install additional packages (#2085).

  • check_man() now succeeds when tools::undoc() returns empty results (#1944).

  • check_win_*() functions gain a email argument, so temporarily change the email the check results will be sent to (#1723).

  • install() now explicitly unloads packages before trying to install a new version (#2094).

  • All install_*() functions now attach build tools to the PATH, which makes them work on Windows when RTools is not on the default PATH (#2093).

  • test_coverage_file() now works when there is not a 1 to 1 correspondence between test and source files (#2011).

  • release() now works again when pkg is not the current working directory (#1974).

  • release() now works without error when options("repos") is unnamed (#1956).

  • create() added, the RStudio IDE uses create(), so removing it in version 2.1.0 broke old versions of the IDE.

  • In several places http: URLs were used instead of https:, the most critical being in the cran_mirror, cran_pacakges, and cran_submission_url values which could have enabled discrete activity disclosure and person-in-the-middle attacks (i.e. changing the contents while uploading/downloading). All http: URLS have been changed to https: URLs. (@hrbrmstr, #2091)

devtools 2.1.0

CRAN release: 2019-07-06

New Features

  • testthat and roxygen2 are now added to Imports rather than Suggests, so they are automatically installed when you install devtools.

Deprecated functions now removed

  • create(), create_description(), setup() use_appveyor(), use_build_ignore(), use_code_of_conduct(), use_coverage(), use_cran_badge(), use_cran_comments(), use_data(), use_data_raw(), use_dev_version(), use_git(), use_git_hook(), use_github(), use_github_links(), use_gpl3_license(), use_mit_license(), use_news_md(), use_package(), use_package_doc(), use_rcpp(), use_readme_md(), use_readme_rmd(), use_revdep(), use_rstudio(), use_test(), use_testthat(), use_travis(), use_vignette(), have been removed after being deprecated in previous releases. Use the versions in the usethis package directly.

  • check_cran(), revdep_check(), revdep_check_print_problems(), revdep_check_reset(), revdep_check_resume(), revdep_check_save_summary(), revdep_email() have been removed after being deprecated in previous releases. It is recommended to use the revdepcheck package instead.

  • system_check(), system_output() have been removed after being deprecated in previous releases. It is recommend to use the processx package instead.

  • build_win() has been removed, after being deprecated in previous releases.

  • yesno() as used in release() now has clearer synonyms for “yes” (@mattmalin, #1993)

Minor improvements and fixes

devtools 2.0.2

CRAN release: 2019-04-08

  • Two tests are now skipped when run on CRAN, as they fail due to an outdated pandoc and restrictions on writing to the package library respectively.

  • load_all() now accepts ‘package’ objects, regaining previous behavior in devtools prior to 2.0.0 (#1923)

  • test(), test_coverage() and test_coverage_file() now set the TESTTHAT_PKG environment variable, so it is more consistent with running the tests during R CMD check (testthat#787).

  • check() now replaces existing environment variables rather than appending them (#1914).

devtools 2.0.1

CRAN release: 2018-10-26

This is a minor release mainly fixing bugs which snuck through in the devtools 2.0.0 release.

devtools 2.0.0

CRAN release: 2018-10-19

Devtools 2.0.0 is a major release that contains work from the past year and a half, since the major devtools release (1.13.0).

This release splits the functionality in devtools into a number of smaller packages which are simpler to develop and also easier for other packages to depend on. In particular the following packages have been spun off in what we are calling the ‘conscious uncoupling’ of devtools.

  • remotes: Installing packages (i.e. install_github()).
  • pkgbuild: Building binary packages (including checking if build tools are available) (i.e. build()).
  • pkgload: Simulating package loading (i.e. load_all()).
  • rcmdcheck: Running R CMD check and reporting the results (i.e. check()).
  • revdepcheck: Running R CMD check on all reverse dependencies, and figuring out what’s changed since the last CRAN release (i.e. revdep_check()).
  • sessioninfo: R session info (i.e. session_info()).
  • usethis: Automating package setup (i.e. use_test()).

devtools will remain the main package developers will interact with when writing R packages; it will just rely on these other packages internally for most of the functionality.

Breaking changes

There have been a number of breaking changes in this release, while this will cause some short term pain for users it will result in a easier to understand API in the future, so we feel the tradeoff is worthwhile.

  • devtools::install() arguments have been changed as follows.

    • local -> build
    • force_deps -> force
    • upgrade_dependencies -> upgrade
    • threads -> Removed, but you can use Ncpus, which is passed by ... to install.packages()
    • metadata -> Removed
    • out_dir -> Removed
    • skip_if_log_exists -> Removed

  • check() argument check_version has been renamed to remote to better describe what tests are disabled (#1811)

  • get_path(), set_path(), add_path() and on_path() have been removed, this functionality is available with withr::with_path() (#1796).

  • The lang argument to spell_check() was removed, for compatibility with spelling v1.1. (#1715)

  • The previously deprecated with_ functions have now been removed. The functionality has been moved to the withr package.

  • RCMD(), clean_source(), eval_clean() and evalq_clean() have been removed. These functions never worked terribly well, and have been replaced by the much better functions in callr.

  • build_win() has been renamed to check_win_release(), check_win_devel(), and check_win_oldrelease() (#1598).

Deprecated functions

  • Infrastructure functions (use_*) now use the implementations in usethis and the versions in devtools are deprecated. If you use these from a package you should switch your package to depend on usethis directly instead.

  • The revdep_check_* functions have been deprecated in favor of the revdepcheck package.

  • system_check() and system_output() have been deprecated in factor of the processx package.

Major changes

  • All install_*() functions are now re-exported from remotes rather than being defined in devtools

  • devtools now depends on roxygen2 6.1.0: this considerably simplifies devtools::document() and makes it more consistent with roxygen2::roxygenise().

  • test_file() function added to test one or more files from a package (#1755).

  • test_coverage() function added to provide a helper to compute test coverage using covr (#1628).

  • test_file() and test_coverage_file() now have RStudio addins (#1650)

  • test_file_coverage() function added to show the test coverage of one or more files from a package. (#1755).

  • session_info() now uses the implementation in the sessioninfo package. Packages using devtools::session_info() are encouraged to switch to using sessioninfo::session_info() instead.

  • package_info() function now re-exported from the sessioninfo package.

  • check() now uses rcmdcheck to run and parse R CMD check output (#1153).

  • Code related to simulating package loading has been pulled out into a separate package, pkgload. The following functions have been moved to pkgload without a shim: clean_dll(), compile_dll(), dev_example(), dev_help(), dev_meta(), find_topic(), imports_env(), inst(), load_code(), load_dll(), ns_env(), parse_ns_file(), pkg_env(). These functions are primarily for internal use.

    load_all() and unload() have been moved to pkgload, but devtools provides shims since these are commonly used.

  • find_rtools(), setup_rtools(), has_devel(), compiler_flags(), build() and with_debug() have moved to the new pkgbuild package. build() and with_debug() are re-exported by devtools

  • The spell_check() code has been moved into the new spelling package and has thereby gained support for vignettes and package wordlists. The devtools function now wraps spelling::spell_check_package().

Minor improvements and fixes

devtools 1.13.5

CRAN release: 2018-02-18

  • Fix two test errors related to GitHub rate limiting and mocking base functions.

devtools 1.13.4

CRAN release: 2017-11-09

  • Fix test errors for upcoming testthat release.

devtools 1.13.3

CRAN release: 2017-08-02

  • Workaround a change in how Rcpp::compileAttributes stores the symbol names that broke tests.

devtools 1.13.2

CRAN release: 2017-06-02

  • Workaround a regression in Rcpp::compileAttributes. Add trimws implementation for R 3.1 support.

devtools 1.13.1

CRAN release: 2017-05-13

devtools 1.13.0

CRAN release: 2017-05-08

New Features

  • spell_check gains a dict argument to set a custom language or dictionary

  • release() now checks documentation for spelling errors by default.

  • New use_gpl3_license() sets the license field in DESCRIPTION and includes a copy of the license in LICENSE.

Revdep check improvements

  • Various minor improvements around checking of reverse dependencies (#1284, @krlmlr). All packages involved are listed at the start, the whole process is now more resilient against package installation failures.

  • revdep_check() and revdep_check_resume() gain a skip argument which takes a character vector of packages to skip.

  • revdep_check() and check_cran() gain a quiet_check argument. You can use quiet_check = FALSE to see the actual text of R CMD check as it runs (not recommending with multiple threads).

  • revdep_check_resume() now takes ... which can be used to override settings from revdep_check(). For debugging a problem with package checks, try revdep_check(threads = 1, quiet_check = FALSE)

  • revdep_check() collects timing information in timing.md (#1319, @krlmlr).

  • Package names and examples are sorted in case-insensitive C collation (#1322, @krlmlr).

  • use_revdep() adds .gitignore entry for check database (#1321, @krlmlr).

  • Own package is installed in temporary library for revdep checking (#1338, @krlmlr).

  • Automated revdep check e-mails now can use the new my_version and you_cant_install variables. The e-mail template has been updated to use these variables (#1285, @krlmlr).

  • Installation failures are logged during revdep checking, by default in revdep/install. Once an installation has failed, it is not attempted a second time (#1300, @krlmlr).

  • Print summary table in README.md and problems.md (#1284, @krlmlr).

  • Revdep check improvements (#1284)

Bug fixes and minor improvements

  • Handle case of un-installed package being passed to session_info (#1281).

  • Using authentication to access Github package name. (#1262, @eriknil).

  • spell_check() checks for hunspell before running (#1475, @jimvine).

  • add_desc_package() checks for package dependencies correctly (#1463, @thomasp85).

  • Remove deprecated args argument from install_git() to allow passthrough to install (#1373, @ReportMort).

  • added a quiet argument to install_bitbucket(), with a default value of FALSE (fixes issue #1345, @plantarum).

  • update_packages() allows for override of interactive prompt (#1260, @pkq).

  • use_test() template no longer includes useless comments (#1349)

  • Add encoding support in test_dir() call by adding reference to pkg$encoding (#1306, @hansharhoff)

  • Parse valid Git remote URLs that lack trailing .git, e.g. GitHub browser URLs (#1253, @jennybc).

  • Add a check_bioconductor() internal function to automatically install BiocInstaller() if it is not installed and the user wants to do so.

  • Improve Git integration. use_git_ignore() and use_git_config() gain quiet argument, tests work without setting user.name and user.email Git configuration settings (#1320, @krlmlr).

  • Improve Git status checks used in release() (#1205, @krlmlr).

  • Improved handling of local file:// repositories in install() (#1284, @krlmlr).

  • setup() and create() gain new quiet argument (#1284, @krlmlr).

  • Avoid unnecessary query of available_packages() (#1269, @krlmlr).

  • Add cache setting to AppVeyor template (#1290, @krlmlr).

  • Fix AppVeyor test by manually installing curl (#1301).

  • install(dependencies = FALSE) doesn’t query the available packages anymore (@krlmlr, #1269).

  • use_travis() now opens a webpage in your browser to more easily activate a repo.

  • use_readme_rmd() and use_readme() share a common template with sections for package overview, GitHub installation (if applicable), and an example (@jennybc, #1287).

  • test() doesn’t load helpers twice anymore (@krlmlr, #1256).

  • Fix auto download method selection for install_github() on R 3.1 which lacks “libcurl” in capabilities(). (@kiwiroy, #1244)

  • Fix removal of vignette files by not trying to remove files twice anymore (#1291)

  • add timestamp to messages in build_win() (@achubaty, #1367).

devtools 1.12.0

CRAN release: 2016-06-24

New features

  • New install_bioc() function and bioc remote to install Bioconductor packages from their SVN repository.

  • install_dev_deps() gets everything you need to start development on source package - it installs all dependencies, and roxygen2 (#1193).

  • use_dev_version() automates the process of switching from a release version number by tweaking the DESCRIPTION, adding a heading to NEWS.md (if present), and checking into git (if you use it) (#1076.)

  • use_github() accepts a host argument, similar to install_github() (@ijlyttle, #1101)

Bug fixes and minor improvements

  • Update with Rtools-3.4 information, (@jimhester)

  • devtools now uses https to access the RStudio CRAN mirror if it will work on your system (#1059)

  • Handle case when a GitHub request returns a non-JSON error response. (@jimhester, #1204, #1211)

  • Suggested packages, including those specified as Remotes: are now installed after package installation. This allows you to use circular Remotes: dependencies for two related packages as long as one of the dependencies is a Suggested package. (@jimhester, #1184, hadley/dplyr#1809)

  • bug fix for installation of binary packages on windows, they must be installed directly from a zip file. (@jimhester, #1191, #1192)

  • build_vignette() will now only install the “VignetteBuilder” if it’s not present, not try and upgrade it if it is (#1139).

  • clean_dll() Only removes package_name.def files and now operates recursively. (@jimhester, #1175, #1159, #1161)

  • check_man() now prints a message if no problems are found (#1187).

  • install_* functions and update_packages() refactored to allow updating of packages installed using any of the install methods. (@jimhester, #1067)

  • install_github() now uses https://api.github.com as the host argument, so users can specify ‘http:’ or other protocols if needed. (@jimhester, #1131, #1200)

  • load_all() runs package hooks before sourcing test helper files allowing test helper to make use of objects created when a package is loaded or attached. (@imanuelcostigan, #1146)

  • revdep_check() will now create the revdep/ directory if it does not already exist (#1178).

  • source_gist() gains a filename argument to specify a particular file to source from a GitHub gist. (@ateucher, #1172)

  • Add a default codecov.yml file to turn off commenting with use_coverage() (@jimhester, #1188)

  • Bug fix for ‘nchar(text) : invalid multibyte string’ errors when running write_dcf() on DESCRIPTION files with non-ASCII encodings (#1224, @jimhester).

devtools 1.11.1

CRAN release: 2016-04-21

  • Bug fix in search_path_for_rtools() using the gcc-4.9.3 toolchain when there is no rtools setting in the windows registry. (@jimhester, #1155)

devtools 1.11.0

CRAN release: 2016-04-12

Infrastructure helpers

  • create_description() now sets Encoding: UTF-8. This helps non-English package authors (#1123).

  • All use_ function have been overhauled to be more consistent, particularly around notification. Most functions now also ask to overwrite if a file already exists (#1074).

  • use_coverage() now adds covr to “Suggests”, rather than recommending you install it explicitly in .travis.yml.

  • use_cran_badge() now uses HTTPS URL (@krlmlr, #1124).

  • use_github() now confirms that you’ve picked a good title and description (#1092) and prints the url of the repo (#1063).

  • use_news(), and use_test() open the files in RStudio (if you’re using it and have the rstudioapi package installed).

  • use_testthat() tells you what it’s doing (#1056).

  • use_travis() generates a template compatible with the newest R-travis.

  • use_readme_md() creates a basic README.md template (#1064).

  • use_revdep() has an updated template for the new revdep check system (#1090, @krlmlr).

  • Removed the deprecated use_coveralls(), add_rstudio_project(), add_test_infrastructure(), and add_travis().

  • Deprecated build_github_devtools() has been removed.

Checks and release()

  • check() now always succeeds (instead of throwing an error when R CMD check finds an ERROR), returning an object that summarises the check failures.

  • check() gains run_dont_test and manual arguments to control whether or not \donttest{} tests are tested, or manuals are built. This defaults to FALSE, but release() runs check with it set to TRUE (#1071; #1087, @krlmlr).

  • The cleanup argument to check() is deprecated: it now always returns the path to the check directory.

  • check_built() allows you to run R CMD check on an already built package.

  • check_cran() suppresses X11 with DISPLAY = "".

  • release() has been tweaked to improve the order of the questions, and to ensure that you’re ok with problems. It warns if both inst/NEWS.Rd and NEWS.md exist (@krlmlr, #1135), doesn’t throw error if Git head is detached (@krlmlr, #1136).

  • release() gains an args argument to control build options, e.g. to allow passing args = "--compact-vignettes=both" for packages with heavy PDF vignettes (@krlmlr, #1077).

  • system_check() gains new arguments path to controls the working directory of the command, and throw to control whether or not it throws an error on command failure. env has been renamed to the more explicit env_vars.

Revdep checks

revdep_check() has been overhauled. All revdep_ functions now work like other devtools functions, taking a path to the package as the first argument.

revdep_check() now saves its results to disk as check/check.rds, and the other revdep() functions read from that cache. This also allows you to resume a partial run with revdep_check_resume(). This should be a big time saver if something goes unexpected wrong in the middle of the checks. You can blow away the cache and start afresh with revdep_check_reset().

revdep_check_save_summary() now creates README.md to save one level of clicking in github. It also creates a problems.md that contains only results for only packages that had warnings or errors. Each problem is limited to at most 25 lines of output - this avoids lengthy output for failing examples. revdep_check_print_problems() prints a bulleted list of problems, suitable for inclusion in your cran-comments.md.

Summary results are reported as they come in, every then messages you’ll get a message giving elapsed and estimated remaining time.

An experimental revdep_email() emails individual maintainers with their R CMD check summary results (#1014). See testthat and dplyr for example usage.

There were a handful of smaller fixes:

  • revdep_check() doesn’t complain about missing git2r package anymore (#1068, @krlmlr).

  • Package index caches for revdep_check() now time out after 30 minutes.

  • revdep_check_save_logs() has been removed - it is just not that useful.

  • revdep_check_summary() has been removed - it never should have been part of the exported API.

Other improvements

  • Devtools now uses new gcc toolchain on windows, if installed (@jimhester).

  • install_git() now allows you to pass credentials to git2r to specify specific ssh credentials (@onlymee, #982)

  • load_all() now sources all test helpers if you use testthat. This makes it much easier to interactively run tests (#1125). load_all() also correctly handles unix and windows subdirectories within R (@gaborcsardi, #1102)

  • build_win() defaults to only R-devel, since this is most commonly what you want.

  • Help shims now inform you that you’re using development documentation (#1049).

  • git_sha1() Fix fetching the latest git commit so that it also works for shallow git clones, i.e. git clones which make use of depth. (#1048, #1046, @nparley)

devtools 1.10.0

CRAN release: 2016-01-23

New features

  • curl, evaluate, roxygen2 and rversions have been moved from Imports to Suggests to lighten the dependency load of devtools. If you run a function that needs one of the packages, you’ll prompted to install it (#962, @jimhester).

  • Devtools uses a new strategy for detecting RTools on windows: it now only looks for Rtools if you need to load_all() or build() a package with compiled code. This should make it easier to work with devtools if you’re developing pure R packages (#947).

  • package_file() lets you find files inside a package. It starts by finding the root directory of the package (i.e. the directory that contains DESCRIPTION) (#985).

  • use_news_md() adds a basic NEWS.md template (#957).

  • use_mit_license() writes the necessary infrastructure to declare and release an R package under the MIT license in a CRAN-compliant way. (#995, @kevinushey)

  • check(cran = TRUE) adds --run-donttest since you do need to test code in \dontest() for CRAN submission (#1002).

Package installation

Bug fixes and minor improvements

  • check_dev_versions() checks only package dependencies (#983).

  • check_man() replaces check_doc() (since most other functions are named after the corresponding directory). check_doc() will hang around as an alias for the forseeable future (#958).

  • create() produces a dummy namespace will fake comment so roxygen2 will overwrite silently (#1016).

  • create() and setup() are more permissive – they now accept a path to either a new directory or empty directory. (#966, @kevinushey)

  • document() now only runs update_collate() once.

  • load_all() resolves a longstanding lazy load database corruption issue when reloading packages which define S3 methods on generics from base or other packages (#1001, @jimhester).

  • release_checks() gains two new checks:

    • check_vignette_titles() checks that your vignette titles aren’t the default “Vignette Title” (#960, @jennybc).

    • check_news_md() checks that NEWS.md isn’t in your .Rbuildignore (since it’s now supported by CRAN, #1042).

  • revdep_check():

    • More verbose about which package is installed (#926, @krlmlr)

    • Verifies the integrity of already downloaded package archives (#930, @krlmlr)

    • Is now more tolerant of errors when retrieving the summary for a checked package (#929, @krlmlr).

    • When ncpus > 1, it includes the package name for when so you know which package has failed and can start looking at the output without needing to wait for all packages to finish (@mattdowle).

    • Uses proper repository when BiocInstaller::useDevel(TRUE) (#937, @jimhester).

  • Shimmed system.file() now respects mustWork = TRUE and throws an error if the file does not exist (#1034).

  • use_appveyor() template now creates failure.zip artifact instead of polluting the logs with R CMD check output (#1017, @krlmlr, @HenrikBengtsson).

  • use_cran_comments() template has been improved (#1038).

  • use_data() now warns when trying to save the same object twice, and stops if there is no object to save (#948, @krlmlr).

  • use_revdep_check() no longer includes revdep_check_save_logs in default template. I found I never used the logs and they just cluttered up the package directory (#1003).

  • with_*() functions have moved into the withr package, and devtools functions have been deprecated (#925, @jimhester).

devtools 1.9.1

CRAN release: 2015-09-11

  • Avoid importing heavy dependencies to speed up loading (#830, @krlmlr).

  • Remove explicit library(testthat) call in test() (#798, @krlmlr).

  • as.package() and load_all() gain new argument create. Like other functions with a pkg argument, load_all() looks for a DESCRIPTION file in parent directories - if create = TRUE it will be automatically created if there’s a R/ or data/ directory (#852, @krlmlr).

  • build_vignettes() gains dependencies argument (#825, @krlmlr).

  • build_win() now uses curl instead of RCurl for ftp upload.

  • build_win() asks for consent to receive e-mail at maintainer address in interactive mode (#800, @krlmlr).

  • check() now uses a better strategy when cran = TRUE. Instead of attempting to simulate --as-cran behaviour by turning on certain env vars, it now uses --as-cran and turns off problematic checks with env vars (#866). The problematic cran_env_vars() function has been removed.

  • find_rtools() now looks for registry keys in both HKCU (user) and HKLM (admin) locations (@Kevin-Jin, #844)

  • install() can now install dependencies from remote repositories by specifying them as Remotes in the DESCRIPTION file (#902, @jimhester). See vignette("dependencies") for more details.

  • install_*() detects if called on a Bioconductor package and if so, automatically includes the Bioconductor repositories if needed (#895, @jimhester).

  • install_deps() now automatically upgrades out of date dependencies. This is typically what you want when you’re working on a development version of a package. To suppress this behaviour, set upgrade_dependencies = FALSE (#863). install_deps() is more careful with ... - this means additional arguments to install_* are more likely to work (#870).

  • install_gitorious() has been removed since gitorious no longer exists (#913).

  • load_all() no longer fails if a useDynLib() entry in the NAMESPACE is incorrect. This should make it easy to recover from an incorrect @useDynLib, because re-documenting() should now succeed.

  • release() works for packages not located at root of git repository (#845, #846, @mbjones).

  • revdep_check() now installs suggested packages by default (#808), and sets NOT_CRAN env var to false (#809). This makes testing more similar to CRAN so that more packages should pass cleanly. It also sets RGL_USE_NULL to true to stop rgl windows from popping up during testing (#897). It also downloads all source packages at the beginning - this makes life a bit easier if you’re on a flaky internet connection (#906).

  • New uninstall() removes installed package (#820, @krlmlr).

  • Add use_coverage() function to add codecov.io or coveralls.io to a project, deprecate use_coveralls() (@jimhester, #822, #818).

  • use_cran_badge() uses canonical url form preferred by CRAN.

  • use_data() also works with data from the parent frame (#829, @krlmlr).

  • use_git_hook() now creates .git/hooks if needed (#888)

  • GitHub integration extended: use_github() gains a protocol argument (ssh or https), populates URL and BugReports fields of DESCRIPTION (only if non-existent or empty), pushes to the newly created GitHub repo, and sets a remote tracking branch. use_github_links() is a new exported function. dr_github() diagnoses more possible problems. (#642, @jennybc).

  • use_travis(): Default travis script leaves notifications on default settings.

  • uses_testthat() and check_failures() are now exported (#824, #839, @krlmlr).

  • use_readme_rmd() uses uses_git() correctly (#793).

  • with_debug() now uses with_makevars() rather than with_env(), because R reads compilation variables from the Makevars rather than the environment (@jimhester, #788).

  • Properly reset library path after with_lib() (#836, @krlmlr).

  • remove_s4classes() performs a topological sort of the classes (#848, #849, @famuvie).

  • load_all() warns (instead of failing) if importing symbols, methods, or classes from NAMESPACE fails (@krlmlr, #921).

devtools 1.8.0

CRAN release: 2015-05-09

Helpers

  • New dr_devtools() runs some common diagnostics: are you using the latest version of R and devtools? It is run automatically by release() (#592).

  • use_code_of_conduct() adds a contributor code of conduct from http://contributor-covenant.org. (#729)

  • use_coveralls() allows you to easily add test coverage with coveralls (@jimhester, #680, #681).

  • use_git() sets up a package to use git, initialising the repo and checking the existing files.

  • use_test() adds a new test file (#769, @krlmlr).

  • New use_cran_badge() adds a CRAN status badge that you can copy into a README file. Green indicates package is on CRAN. Packages not yet submitted or accepted to CRAN get a red badge.

Package installation and info

Git and github

  • Devtools now uses the git2r package to inspect git properties and install remote git packages with install_git(). This should be considerably more reliable than the previous strategy which involves calling the command line git client. It has two small downsides: install_git() no longer accepts additional args, and must do a deep clone when installing.

  • dr_github() checks for common problems with git/github setup (#643).

  • If you use git, release() now warns you if you have uncommited changes, or if you’ve forgotten to synchronise with the remote (#691).

  • install_github() warns if repository contains submodules (@ashander, #751).

Bug fixes and minor improvements

  • Previously, devtools ran all external R processes with R --vanilla. Now it only suppresses user profiles, and constructs a custom .Rprofile to override the default. Currently, this .Rprofile sets up the repos option. Among others, this enables the cyclic dependency check in devtools::release (#602, @krlmlr).

  • R_BROWSER and R_PDFVIEWER environment variables are set to “false” to suppress random windows opening during checks.

  • Devtools correctly identifies RTools 3.1 and 3.2 (#738), and preserves continuation lines in the DESCRIPTION (#709).

  • dev_help() now uses normalizePath(). Hopefully this will make it more likely to work if you’re on windows and have a space in the path.

  • lint() gains a cache argument (@jimhester, #708).

  • Fixed namespace issues related to stats::setNames() (#734, #772) and utils::unzip() (#761, @robertzk).

  • release() now reminds you to check the existing CRAN check results page (#613) and shows file size before uploading to CRAN (#683, @krlmlr).

  • RCMD() and system_check() are now exported so they can be used by other packages. (@jimhester, #699).

  • revdep_check() creates directories if needed (#759).

  • system_check() combines arguments with , not ,. (#753)

  • test() gains an ... argument so that additional arguments can be passed to testthat::test_dir (@jimhester, #747)

  • use_travis() now suggests you link to the svg icon since that looks a little sharper. Default template sets CRAN: http://cran.rstudio.com/ to enable the cyclic dependency check.

  • NOT_CRAN envvar no longer overrides externally set variable.

  • check(check_version = TRUE) also checks spelling of the DESCRIPTION; if no spell checker is installed, a warning is given (#784, @krlmlr).

devtools 1.7.0

CRAN release: 2015-01-17

Improve reverse dependency checking

Devtools now supports a new and improved style of revdep checking with use_revdep(). This creates a new directory called revdep which contains a check.R template. Run this template to check all reverse dependencies, and save summarised results to check/summary.md. You can then check this file into git, making it much easier to track how reverse dependency results change between versions. The documentation for revdep_check() is much improved, and should be more useful (#635)

I recommend that you specify a library to use when checking with options("devtools.revdep.libpath"). (This should be a directory that already exists). This should be difference from your default library to keep the revdep environment isolated from your development environment.

I’ve also tweaked the output of revdep_maintainers() so it’s easier to copy and paste into an email (#634). This makes life a little easier pre-release.

New helpers

  • lint() runs lintr::lint_package() to check style consistency and errors in a package. (@jimhester, #694)

  • use_appveyor() sets up a package for testing with AppVeyor (@krlmlr, #549).

  • use_cran_comments() creates a cran-comments.md template and adds it to .Rbuildignore to help with CRAN submissions. (#661)

  • use_git_hook() allows you to easily add a git hook to a package.

  • use_readme_rmd() sets up a template to generate a README.md from a README.Rmd with knitr.

Minor improvements

  • Deprecated doc_clean argument to check() has been removed.

  • Initial package version in create() is now 0.0.0.9000 (#632). create() and create_description() checks that the package name is valid (#610).

  • load_all() runs roxygen2::update_collate() before loading code. This ensures that files are sourced in the way you expect, as defined by roxygen @include tags. If you don’t have any @include tags, the collate will be not be touched (#623).

  • session_info() gains include_base argument to also display loaded/attached base packages (#646).

  • release() no longer asks if you’ve read the CRAN policies since the CRAN submission process now asks the same question (#692).

    release(check = TRUE) now runs some additional custom checks. These include:

    • Checking that you don’t depend on a development version of a package.

    • Checking that the version number has exactly three components (#633).

    release() now builds packages without the --no-manual switch, both for checking and for actually building the release package (#603, @krlmlr). build() gains an additional argument manual, defaulting to FALSE, and check() gains ... unmodified to build().

  • use_travis() now sets an environment variable so that any WARNING will also cause the build to fail (#570).

  • with_debug() and compiler_flags() set CFLAGS etc instead of PKG_CFLAGS. PKG_* are for packages to use, the raw values are for users to set. (According to http://cran.rstudio.com/doc/manuals/r-devel/R-exts.html#Using-Makevars)

  • New setup() works like create() but assumes an existing, not necessarily empty, directory (#627, @krlmlr).

Bug fixes

  • When installing a pull request, install_github() now uses the repository associated with the pull request’s branch (and not the repository of the user who created the pull request) (#658, @krlmlr).

  • missing_s3() works once again (#672)

  • Fixed scoping issues with unzip().

  • load_code() now executes the package’s code with the package’s root as working directory, just like R CMD build et al. (#640, @krlmlr).

devtools 1.6.1

CRAN release: 2014-10-07

  • Don’t set non-portable compiler flags on Solaris.

  • The file template.Rproj is now correctly installed and the function use_rstudio works as it should. (#595, @hmalmedal)

  • The function use_rcpp will now create the file src/.gitignore with the correct wildcards. (@hmalmedal)

  • The functions test, document, load_all, build, check and any function that applies to some package directory will work from subdirectories of a package (like the “R” or “inst/tests” directories). (#616, @robertzk)

devtools 1.6

CRAN release: 2014-09-23

Tool templates and create()

  • create() no longer generates man/ directory - roxygen2 now does this automatically. It also no longer generates an package-level doc template. If you want this, use use_package_doc(). It also makes a dummy namespace so that you can build & reload without running document() first.

  • New use_data() makes it easy to include data in a package, either in data/ (for exported datasets) or in R/sysdata.rda (for internal data). (#542)

  • New use_data_raw() creates data-raw/ directory for reproducible generation of data/ files (#541).

  • New use_package() allows you to set dependencies (#559).

  • New use_package_doc() sets up an Roxygen template for package-level docs.

  • New use_rcpp() sets up a package to use Rcpp.

  • use_travis() now figures out your github username and repo so it can construct the markdown for the build image. (#546)

  • New use_vignette() creates a draft vignette using Rmarkdown (#572).

  • renamed add_rstudio_project() to use_rstudio(), add_travis() to use_travis(), add_build_ignore() to use_build_ignore(), and add_test_infrastructure() to use_testthat() (old functions are aliased to new)

The release process

  • You can add arbitrary extra questions to release() by defining a function release_questions() in your package. Your release_questions() should return a character vector of questions to ask (#451).

  • release() uses new CRAN submission process, as implemented by submit_cran() (#430).

Package installation

  • All install_* now use the same code and store much useful metadata. Currently only session_info() takes advantage of this information, but it will allow the development of future tools like generic update functions.

  • Vignettes are no longer installed by default because they potentially require all suggested packages to also be installed. Use build_vignettes = TRUE to force building and to install all suggested packages (#573).

  • install_bitbucket() has been bought into alignment with install_github(): this means you can now specify repos with the compact username/repo@ref syntax. The username is now deprecated.

  • install_git() has been simplified and many of the arguments have changed names for consistency with metadata for other package installs.

  • install_github() has been considerably improved:

    • username is deprecated - please include the user in the repo name: rstudio/shiny, hadley/devtools etc.

    • dependencies = TRUE is no longer forced (regression in 1.5) (@krlmlr, #462).

    • Deprecated parameters auth_user, branch, pull and password have all been removed.

    • New host argument which allows you to install packages from github enterprise (#410, #506).

    • The GitHub API is used to download archive file (@krlmlr, #466) - this makes it less likely to break in the future.

    • To download a specified pull request, use ref = github_pull(...) (@krlmlr, #509). To install the latest release, use "user/repo@*release" or ref = github_release() (@krlmlr, #350).

  • install_gitorious() has been bought into alignment with install_github(): this means you can now specify repos with the compact username/repo@ref syntax. You must now always supply user (project) name and repo.

  • install_svn() lets you install an R package from a subversion repository (assuming you have subversion installed).

  • decompress() and hence install_url() now work when the downloaded file decompresses without additional top-level directory (#537).

Other minor improvements and bug fixes

  • If you’re using RStudio, and you’re trying to build a binary package without the necessary build tools, RStudio will prompt to download and install the right thing. (#488)

  • Commands are no longer run with LC_ALL=C - this no longer seems necessary (#507).

  • build(binary = TRUE) creates an even-more-temporary package library avoid conflicts (#557).

  • check_dir() no longer fails on UNC paths (#522).

  • check_devtools() also checks for dependencies on development versions of packages (#534).

  • load_all() no longer fails on partial loading of a package containing S4 or RC classes (#577).

  • On windows, find_rtools() is now run on package load, not package attach.

  • help(), ?, and system.file() are now made available when a package is loaded with load_all(), even if the devtools package isn’t attached.

  • httr 0.3 required (@krlmlr, #466).

  • load_all() no longer gives an error when objects listed as exports are missing.

  • Shim added for library.dynam.unload().

  • loaded_packages() now returns package name and path it was loaded from. (#486)

  • The parenvs() function has been removed from devtools, because is now in the pryr package.

  • missing_s3() uses a better heuristic for determining if a function is a S3 method (#393).

  • New session_info() provides useful information about your R session. It’s a little more focussed than sessionInfo() and includes where packages where installed from (#526).

  • rstudioapi package moved from suggests to imports, since it’s always needed (it’s job is to figure out if rstudio is available, #458)

  • Implemented own version utils::unzip() that throws error if command fails and doesn’t print unneeded messages on non-Windows platforms (#540).

  • Wrote own version of write.dcf() that doesn’t butcher whitespace and fieldnames.

Removed functionality

  • The fresh argument to test() has been removed - this is best done by the editor since it can run the tests in a completely clean environment by starting a new R session.

  • compile_dll() can now build packages located in R’s tempdir() directory (@richfitz, #531).

devtools 1.5

CRAN release: 2014-04-07

Four new functions make it easier to add useful infrastructure to packages:

  • add_test_infrastructure() will create test infrastructure for a new package. It is called automatically from test() if no test directories are found, the session is interactive and you agree.

  • add_rstudio_project() adds an RStudio project file to your package. create() gains an rstudio argument which will automatically create an RStudio project in the package directory. It defaults to TRUE: if you don’t use RStudio, just delete the file.

  • add_travis() adds a basic travis template to your package. .travis.yml is automatically added to .Rbuildignore to avoid including it in the built package.

  • add_build_ignore() makes it easy to add files to .Rbuildignore, correctly escaping special characters

Two dependencies were incremented:

  • devtools requires at least R version 3.0.2.

  • document() requires at least roxygen2 version 3.0.0.

Minor improvements

  • build_win() now builds R-release and R-devel by default (@krlmlr, #438). It also gains parameter args, which is passed on to build() (@krlmlr, #421).

  • check_doc() now runs document() automatically.

  • install() gains thread argument which allows you to install multiple packages in parallel (@mllg, #401). threads argument to check_cran() now defaults to getOption("Ncpus")

  • install_deps(deps = T) no longer installs all dependencies of dependencies (#369).

  • install_github() now prefers personal access tokens supplied to auth_token rather than passwords (#418, @jeroenooms).

  • install_github() now defaults to dependencies = TRUE so you definitely get all the packages you need to build from source.

  • devtools supplies its own version of system.file() so that when the function is called from the R console, it will have special behavior for packages loaded with devtools.

  • devtools supplies its own version of help and ?, which will search devtools-loaded packages as well as normally-loaded packages.

Bug fixes

  • check_devtools() no longer called by check() because the relevant functionality is now included in R CMD CHECK and it was causing false positives (#446).

  • install_deps(TRUE) now includes packages listed in VignetteBuilder (#396)

  • build() no longer checks for pdflatex when building vignettes, as many modern vignettes don’t need it (#398). It also uses --no-build-vignettes for >3.0.0 compatibility (#391).

  • release() does a better job of opening your email client if you’re inside of RStudio (#433).

  • check() now correctly reports the location of the R CMD check output when called with a custom check_dir. (Thanks to @brentonk)

  • check_cran() records check times for each package tested.

  • Improved default DESCRIPTION file created by create_description(). (Thanks to @ncarchedi, #428)

  • Fixed bug in install_github() that prevented installing a pull request by supplying repo = "username/repo#pull". (#388)

  • explicitly specify user agent when querying user name and ref for pull request in install_github. (Thanks to Kirill Müller, #405)

  • install_github() now removes blank lines found in a package DESCRIPTION file, protecting users from the vague error: contains a blank line error. (#394)

  • with_options() now works, instead of throwing an error (Thanks to @krlmlr, #434)

devtools 1.4.1

CRAN release: 2013-11-27

  • Fixed bug in wd() when path was omitted. (#374)

  • Fixed bug in dev_help() that prevented it from working when not using RStudio.

  • source_gist() respects new github policy by sending user agent (hadley/devtools)

  • install_github() now takes repo names of the form [username/]repo[/subdir][@ref|#pull] - this is now the recommended form to specify username, subdir, ref and/or pull for install_github. (Thanks to Kirill Müller, #376)

devtools 1.4

CRAN release: 2013-11-20

Installation improvements

  • install() now respects the global option keep.source.pkgs.

  • install() gains a build_vignettes which defaults to TRUE, and ensures that vignettes are built even when doing a local install. It does this by forcing local = FALSE if the package has vignettes, so R CMD build can follow the usual process. (#344)

  • install_github() now takes repo names of the form username/repo - this is now the recommended form for install_github if your username is not hadley ;)

  • install_github() now adds details on the source of the installed package (e.g. repository, SHA1, etc.) to the package DESCRIPTION file. (Thanks to JJ Allaire)

  • Adjusted install_version() to new meta data structure on CRAN. (Thanks to Kornelius Rohmeyer)

  • Fixed bug so that install_version() works with version numbers that contain hyphens. (Thanks to Kornelius Rohmeyer)

  • install_deps() is now exported, making it easier to install the dependencies of a package.

Other minor improvements

  • build(binary = TRUE) now no longer installs the package as a side-effect. (#335)

  • build_github_devtools() is a new function which makes it easy for Windows users to upgrade to the development version of devtools.

  • create_description() does a better job of combining defaults and user specified options. (#332)

  • install() also installs the dependencies that do not have the required versions; besides, the argument dependencies now works like install.packages() (in previous versions, it was essentially c("Depends", "Imports", "LinkingTo")) (thanks, Yihui Xie, #355)

  • check() and check_cran() gain new check_dir argument to control where checking takes place (#337)

  • check_devtools() no longer incorrectly complains about a vignettes/ directory

  • Decompression of zip files now respects getOption("unzip") (#326)

  • dev_help will now use the RStudio help pane, if you’re using a recent version of RStudio (#322)

  • Release is now a little bit smarter: if it’s a new package, it’ll ask you to read and agree to the CRAN policies; it will only ask about dependencies if it has any.

  • source_url() (and source_gist()) accept SHA1 prefixes.

  • source_gist() uses the GitHub API to reliably locate the raw gist. Additionally it now only attempts to source files with .R or .r extensions, and gains a quiet argument. (#348)

  • Safer installation of source packages, which were previously extracted directly into the temp directory; this could be a problem if directory names collide. Instead, source packages are now extracted into unique subdirectories.

devtools 1.3

CRAN release: 2013-07-04

Changes to best practices

  • The documentation for many devtools functions has been considerably expanded, aiming to give the novice package developer more hints about what they should be doing and why.

  • load_all() now defaults to reset = TRUE so that changes to the NAMESPACE etc. are incorporated. This makes it slightly slower (but hopefully not noticeably so), and generally more accurate, and a better simulation of the install + restart + reload cycle.

  • test() now looks in both inst/test and tests/testthat for unit tests. It is recommended to use tests/testthat because it allows users to choose whether or not to install test. If you move your tests from inst/tests to tests/testthat, you’ll also need to change tests/test-all.R to run test_check() instead of test_package(). This change requires testthat 0.8 which will be available on CRAN shortly.

  • New devtools guarantee: if because of a devtools bug, a CRAN maintainer yells at you, I’ll send you a hand-written apology note. Just forward me the email and your address.

New features

  • New install_local() function for installing local package files (as zip, tar, tgz, etc.) (Suggested by landroni)

  • parse_deps(), which parses R’s package dependency strings, is now exported.

  • All package and user events (e.g. load, unload, attach and detach) are now called in the correct place.

Minor improvements and bug fixes

  • build() gains args parameter allowing you to add additional arbitrary arguments, and check() gains similar build_args parameter.

  • install_git gains git_arg parameter allowing you to add arbitrary additional arguments.

  • Files are now loaded in a way that preserves srcreferences - this means that you will get much better locations on error messages, which should considerably aid debugging.

  • Fixed bug in build_vignettes() which prevented files in inst/doc from being updated

  • as.package() no longer uses the full path, which should make for nicer error messages.

  • More flexibility when installing package dependencies with the dependencies argument to install_*() (thanks to Martin Studer)

  • The deprecated show_rd() function has now been removed.

  • install_bitbucket() gains auth_user and password params so that you can install from private repos (thanks to Brian Bolt)

  • Better git detection on windows (thanks to Mikhail Titov)

  • Fix bug so that document() will automatically create man/ directory

  • Default DESCRIPTION gains LazyData: true

  • create_description() now checks that the directory is probably a package by looking for R/, data/ or src/ directories

  • Rolled back required R version from 3.0 to 2.15.

  • Add missing import for digest()

  • Bump max compatible version of R with RTools 3.0, and add details for RTools 3.1

devtools 1.2

CRAN release: 2013-04-17

Better installation

  • install gains a local option for installing the package from the local package directory, rather than from a built tar.gz. This is now used by default for all package installations. If you want to guarantee a clean build, run local = FALSE

  • install now uses option devtools.install.args for default installation arguments. This allows you to set any useful defaults (e.g. --no-multiarch) in your Rprofile.

  • install_git gains branch argument to specify branch or tag (Fixes #255)

Clean sessions

  • run_examples and test gain a fresh argument which forces them to run in a fresh R session. This completely insulates the examples/tests from your current session but means that interactive code (like browser()) won’t work.(Fixes #258)

  • New functions eval_clean and evalq_clean make it easy to evaluate code in a clean R session.

  • clean_source loses the vanilla argument (which did not work) and gains a quiet argument

New features

  • source_url and source_gist now allow you to specify a sha, so you can make sure that files you source from the internet don’t change without you knowing about it. (Fixes #259)

  • build_vignettes builds using buildVignette() and movies/copies outputs using the same algorithm as R CMD build. This means that build_vignettes() now exactly mimics R’s regular behaviour, including building non-Sweave vignettes (#277), building in the correct directory (#231), using make files (if present), and copying over extra files.

  • devtools now sets best practice compiler flags: from check(), -Wall -pedantic and from load_all(), -Wall -pedantic -g -O0 -UNDEBUG. These are prefixed to existing environment variables so that you can override them if desired. (Fixes #257)

  • If there’s no DESCRIPTION file present, load_all() will automatically create one using create_description(). You can set options in your .Rprofile to control what it contains: see package?devtools for more details.

Minor improvements

  • check() now also sets environment variable _R_CHECK_CODE_DATA_INTO_GLOBALENV_ to TRUE (to match current --as-cran behaviour) (Fixes #256)

  • Improved default email sent by release(), eliminating create.post() boilerplate

  • revdep includes LinkingTo by default.

  • Fixed regular expression problem that caused RTools 3.0.* to fail to be found on Windows.

  • load_data() got an overhaul and now respects LazyData and correctly exports datasets by default (Fixes #242)

  • with_envvar gains the option to either replace, prefix or suffix existing environmental variables. The default is to replace, which was the previous behaviour.

  • check_cran includes sessionInfo() in the summary output (Fixes #273)

  • create() gains a check argument which defaults to FALSE.

  • with_env will be deprecated in 1.2 and removed in 1.3

  • When load_all() calls .onAttach() and .onLoad(), it now passes the lib path to those functions.

devtools 1.1

CRAN release: 2013-02-09

  • source_gist() has been updated to accept new gist URLs with username. (Fixes #247)

  • test() and document() now set environment variables, including NOT_CRAN.

  • Test packages have been renamed to avoid conflicts with existing packages on CRAN. This bug prevented devtools 1.0 from passing check on CRAN for some platforms.

  • Catch additional case in find_rtools(): previously installed, but directory empty/deleted (Fixes #241)

devtools 1.0

CRAN release: 2013-01-22

Improvements to package loading

  • Rcpp attributes are now automatically compiled during build.

  • Packages listed in depends are require()d (Fixes #161, #178, #192)

  • load_all inserts a special version of system.file into the package’s imports environment. This tries to simulate the behavior of base::system.file but gives modified results because the directory structure of installed packages and uninstalled source packages is different. (Fixes #179). In other words, system.file should now just work even if the package is loaded with devtools.

  • Source files are only recompiled if they’ve changed since the last run, and the recompile will be clean (--preclean) if any exported header files have changed. (Closes #224)

  • The compilation process now performs a mock install instead of using R CMD SHLIB. This means that Makevars and makefiles will now be respected and generally there should be fewer mismatches between load_all and the regular install and reload process.

  • S4 classes are correctly loaded and unloaded.

Windows

  • Rtools detection on windows has been substantially overhauled and should both be more reliable, and when it fails give more information about what is wrong with your install.

  • If you don’t have rtools installed, devtools now automatically sets the TAR environment variable to internal so you can still build packages.

Minor features

  • check_cran now downloads packages from cran.rstudio.com.

  • check() now makes the CRAN version check optional, and off by default. The release() function still checks the version number against CRAN.

  • In check(), it is optional to require suggested packages, using the force_suggests option.

  • When check() is called, the new default behavior is to not delete existing .Rd files from man/. This behavior can be set with the “devtools.cleandoc” option.

  • install_bitbucket() now always uses lowercase repo names. (Thanks to mnel)

  • New function with_lib(), which runs an expression code with a library path prepended to the existing libpaths. It differs slightly from with_libpaths(), which replaces the existing libpaths.

  • New function install_git() installs a package directly from a git repository. (Thanks to David Coallier)

  • If pdflatex isn’t available, don’t try to build vignettes with install() or check(). (Fixes #173)

  • install_github() now downloads from a new URL, to reflect changes on how files are hosted on GitHub.

  • build() now has a vignettes option to turn off rebuilding vignettes.

  • install(quick=TRUE) now builds the package without rebuilding vignettes. (Fixes #167)

  • All R commands called from devtools now have the environment variable NOT_CRAN set, so that you can perform tasks when you know your code is definitely not running on CRAN. (Closes #227)

  • Most devtools functions can a quiet argument that suppresses output. This is particularly useful for testing.

Bug fixes

  • Fixed path issue when looking for Rtools on windows when registry entry is not present. (Fixes #201)

  • Reloading a package that requires a forced-unload of the namespace now works.

  • When reloading a package that another loaded package depends on, if there was an error loading the code, devtools would print out something about an error in unloadNamespace, which was confusing. It now gives more useful errors.

  • An intermittent error in clear_topic_index related to using rm() has been fixed. (Thanks to Gregory Jefferis)

  • revdep() now lists “Suggests” packages, in addition to “Depends” and “Imports”.

  • revdep_check() now correctly passes the recursive argument to revdep().

  • The collection of check results at the end of check_cran() previously did not remove existing results, but now it does.

  • When a package is loaded with load_all(), it now passes the name of the package to the .onLoad() function. (Thanks to Andrew Redd)

devtools 0.8.0

New features

  • create function makes it easier to create a package skeleton using devtools standards.

  • install_github() can now install from a pull request – it installs the branch referenced in the pull request.

  • install_github now accepts auth_user and password arguments if you want to install a package in a private github repo. You only need to specify auth_user if it’s not your package (i.e. it’s not your username) (Fixes #116)

  • new dev_help function replaces show_rd and makes it easy to get help on any topic in a development package (i.e. a package loaded with load_all) (Fixes #110)

  • dev_example runs the examples for one in-development package. (Fixes #108)

  • build_vignettes now looks in modern location for vignettes (vignettes/) and warn if vignettes found in old location (inst/doc). Building now occurs in a temporary directory (to avoid polluting the package with build artefacts) and only final pdf files are copied over.

  • new clean_vignettes function to remove pdfs in inst/doc that were built from vignettes in vignettes/

  • load_all does a much better job at simulating package loading (see LOADING section). It also compiles and loads C/C++/Fortran code.

  • unload() is now an exported function, which unloads a package, trying harder than just detach. It now also unloads DLLs. (Winston Chang. Fixes #119)

  • run_examples now has parameters show, test, run to control which of \dontrun{}, \dontshow{}, \donttest{} and \testonly{} are commented out. The strict parameter has been removed since it is no longer necessary because load_all can respect namespaces. (Fixes #118)

  • build(), check(), install() etc now run R in --vanilla mode which prevents it from reading any of your site or personal configuration files. This should prevent inconsistencies between the environment in which the package is run between your computer and other computers (e.g. the CRAN server) (Fixes #145)

  • All system R command now print the full command used to make it easier to understand what’s going on.

Package paths

  • as.package no longer uses ~/.Rpackages.

  • as.package provides more informative error messages when path does not exist, isn’t a directory, or doesn’t contain a DESCRIPTION file.

  • New function inst() takes the name of a package and returns the installed path of that package. (Winston Chang. Fixes #130). This makes it possible to use devtools functions (e.g. unload) with regular installed packages, not just in-development source packages.

  • New function devtest() returns paths to an internal testing packages in devtools.

Loading

  • Development packages are now loaded into a namespace environment, , and then the objects namespace are copied to the package environment, . This more accurately simulates how packages are normally loaded. However, all of the objects (not just the exported ones) are still copied to the package environment. (Winston Chang. Fixes #3, #60, and #125)

  • Packages listed in Imports and Depends are now loaded into an imports environment, with name attribute “imports:xxxx”, which is the parent of the namespace environment. The imports environment is in turn a child of the

  • The NAMESPACE file is now used for loading imports, instead of the DESCRIPTION file. Previously, load_all loaded all objects from the packages listed in DESCRIPTION. Now it loads packages (and, when ‘importFrom’ is used, specific objects from packages) listed in NAMESPACE. This more closely simulates normal package loading. It still checks version numbers of packages listed in DESCRIPTION. (Winston Chang)

  • load_all can now be used to properly reload devtools. It does this by creating a copy of the devtools namespace environment, and calling load_all from that environment. (Winston Chang)

  • The .onLoad and .onAttach functions for a development package are now both called when loading a package for the first time, or with reset=TRUE, and the order more correctly simulates normal package loading (create the namespace, call .onLoad, copy objects to the package environment, and then call .onAttach). (Winston Chang)

  • load_all will now throw a warning if a dependency package does not satisfy the version requirement listed in DESCRIPTION. (Winston Chang. Fixes #109)

  • The package environment now has a ‘path’ attribute, similar to a package loaded the normal way. (Winston Chang)

  • load_all now has an option export_all. When set to TRUE, only the objects listed as exports in NAMESPACE are exported. (Winston Chang)

  • load_all now compiles C files in the /src directory. (Winston Chang)

  • New functions compile_dll() and clean_dll(), which compile C/C++/ Fortran source code, and clean up the compiled objects, respectively. (Winston Chang. Fixes #131)

Bug fixes

  • load_code now properly skips missing files. (Winston Chang)

  • Add --no-resave-data to default build command.

  • The subject line of the email created by release is now “CRAN submission [package] [version]”, per CRAN repository policy.

  • install_bitbucket properly installs zip files of projects stored in Mercurial repositories. (Winston Chang. Fixes #148)

  • build now builds vignettes because install does not. (Fixes #155)

Introspection

  • New function loaded_packages(), which returns the names of packages that are loaded and attached.

  • Packages loaded with load_all now store devtools metadata in their namespace environment, in a variable called .__DEVTOOLS__. This can be accessed with the dev_meta function. (Winston Chang. Fixes #128)

  • dev_mode now stores the path it uses in option dev_path. That makes it easy for other applications to detect when it is on and to act accordingly.

  • New function parse_ns_file(), which parses a NAMESPACE file for a package.

  • New function parenvs(), which parents the parent environments of an object. (Winston Chang)

devtools 0.7.1

CRAN release: 2012-07-02

  • bump dependency to R 2.15

  • load_code now also looks for files ending in .q - this is not recommended, but is needed for some older packages

devtools 0.7

CRAN release: 2012-06-19

Installation

  • install_bitbucket installs R packages on bitbucket.

  • install now uses --with-keep.source to make debugging a little easier.

  • All remote install functions give better error messages in the case of http errors (Fixes #82).

  • install has new quick option to make package installation faster, by sacrificing documentation, demos and multi-architecture binaries. (Fixes #77)

  • install_url, install_github and install_gitorious gain a subdir argument which makes it possible to install packages that are contained within a sub-directory of a repository or compressed file. (Fixes #64)

Checking

  • with_debug function temporarily sets env vars so that compilation is performed with the appropriate debugging flags set. Contributed by Andrew Redd.

  • revdep, revdep_maintainers and revdep_check for calculating reverse dependencies, finding their maintainers and running R CMD check. (Fixes #78)

  • check_cran has received a massive overhaul: it now checks multiple packages, installs dependencies (in user specified library), and parse check output to extract errors and warnings

  • check uses new --as-cran option to make checking as close to CRAN as possible (fixes #68)

Other new features

  • devtools now uses options devtools.path to set the default path to use with devmode, and github.user to set the default user when installing packages from github.

  • if no package supplied, and no package has been worked with previously, all functions now will try the working directory. (Fixes #87)

  • on windows, devtools now looks in the registry to find where Rtools is installed, and does a better a job of locating gcc. (Contributed by Andrew Redd)

  • show_rd passes ... on to Rd2txt - this is useful if you’re checking how build time \Sexprs are generated.

  • A suite of with functions that allow you to temporarily alter the environment in which code is run: in_dir, with_collate, with_locale, with_options, with_path, … (Fixes #89)

  • release ask more questions and randomises correct answers so you really need to read them (Fixes #79)

  • source_gist now accepts default url such as “https://gist.github.com/nnn”

  • New system path manipulation functions, get_path, set_path, add_path and on_path, contributed by Andrew Redd.

  • If you’re on windows, devtools now suppresses the unimportant warning from CYGWIN about the dos style file paths

Bug fixes

  • decompress now uses target directory as defined in the function call when expanding a compressed file. (Fixes #84)

  • document is always run in a C locale so that NAMESPACE sort order is consistent across platforms.

  • install now quotes libpath and build path so paths with embedded spaces work (Fixes #73 and #76)

  • load_data now also loads .RData files (Fixes #81)

  • install now has args argument to pass additional command line arguments on to R CMD install (replaces ... which didn’t actually do anything). (Fixes #69)

  • load_code does a better job of reconciling files in DESCRIPTION collate with files that actually exist in the R directory. (Fixes #14)

devtools 0.6

CRAN release: 2012-02-28

New features

  • test function takes filter argument which allows you to restrict which tests are to be run

  • check runs with example timings, as is done on CRAN. Run with new param cleanup = F to access the timings.

  • missing_s3 function to help figure out if you’ve forgotten to export any s3 methods

  • check_cran downloads and checks a CRAN package - this is useful to run as part of the testing process of your package if you want to check the dependencies of your package

  • strict mode for run_examples which runs each example in a clean environment. This is much slower than the default (running in the current environment), but ensures that each example works standalone.

  • dev_mode now updates prompt to indicate that it’s active (Thanks to Kohske Takahashi)

  • new source_url function for sourcing script on a remote server via protocols other than http (e.g. https or ftp). (Thanks to Kohske Takahashi)

  • new source_gist function to source R code stored in a github gist. (Thanks to Kohske Takahashi)

  • load_all now also loads all package dependencies (including suggestions) - this works around some bugs in the way that devtools attaches the development environment into the search path in a way that fails to recreate what happens normally during package loading.

Installation

  • remote installation will ensure the configure file is executable.

  • all external package installation functions are vectorised so you can install multiple packages at time

  • new install_gitorious function install packages in gitorious repos.

  • new install_url function for installing package from an arbitrary url

  • include install_version function from Jeremy Stephens for installing a specific version of a CRAN package from the archive.

Better windows behaviour

  • better check for OS type (thanks to Brian Ripley)

  • better default paths for 64-bit R on windows (Fixes #35)

  • check to see if Rtools is already available before trying to mess with the paths. (Fixes #55)

Bug fixes

  • if an error occurs when calling loading R files, the cache will be automatically cleared so that all files are loaded again next time you try (Fixes #55)

  • functions that run R now do so with R_LIBS set to the current .libPaths() - this will ensure that checking uses the development library if you are in development mode. R_ENVIRON_USER is set to an empty file to avoid your existing settings overriding this.

  • load_data (called by load_all) will also load data defined in R files in the data directory. (Fixes #45)

  • dev_mode performs some basic tests to make sure you’re not setting your development library to a directory that’s not already an R library. (Fixes #25)

devtools 0.5.1

CRAN release: 2011-12-07

  • Fix error in that was causing R commands to fail on windows.

devtools 0.5

CRAN release: 2011-12-04

New functions

  • new show_rd function that will show the development version of a help file.

Improvements and bug fixes

  • external R commands always run in locale C, because that’s what the CRAN severs do.

  • clean_source sources an R script into a fresh R environment, ensuring that it can run independently of your current working environment. Optionally (vanilla = T), it will source in a vanilla R environment which ignores all local environment settings.

  • On windows, devtools will also add the path to mingw on startup. (Thanks to pointer from Dave Lovell)

devtools 0.4

CRAN release: 2011-07-23

New functions

  • new wd function to change the working directory to a package subdirectory.

  • check_doc now checks package documentation as a whole, in the same way that R CMD check does, rather than low-level syntax checking, which is done by roxygen2. DESCRIPTION checking has been moved intoload_all.check_rd` has been removed.

  • build is now exported, and defaults to building in the package’s parent directory. It also gains a new binary parameter controls whether a binary or a source version (with no vignettes or manuals) is built. Confusingly, binary packages are built with R CMD INSTALL.

  • build_win sends your package to the R windows builder, allowing you to make a binary version of your package for windows users if you’re using linux or macOS (if you’re using windows already, use build(binary = T))

Improvements and bug fixes

  • if using .Rpackages config file, default function is used last, not first.

  • on Windows, devtools now checks for the presence of Rtools on startup, and will automatically add it to the path if needed.

  • document uses roxygen2 instead of roxygen. It now loads package dependency so that they’re available when roxygen executes the package source code.

  • document has new parameter clean which clears all roxygen caches and removes all existing man files. check now runs document in this mode.

  • dev_mode will create directories recursively, and complain if it can’t create them. It should also work better on windows.

  • install_github now allows you to specify which branch to download, and automatically reloads package if needed.

  • reload now will only reload if the package is already loaded.

  • release gains check parameter that allows you to skip package check (if you’ve just done it.)

  • test automatically reloads code so you never run tests on old code

devtools 0.3

CRAN release: 2011-06-30

  • new bash() function that starts bash shell in package directory. Useful if you want to use git etc.

  • removed inelegant update_src() since now superseded by bash()

  • fix bug in ftp upload that was adding extraneous space

  • build function builds package in specified directory. install, check and release now all use this function.

  • build, install, check and release better about cleaning up after themselves - always try to both work in session temporary directory and delete any files/directories that they create

devtools 0.2

CRAN release: 2011-06-29

  • install_github now uses RCurl instead of external wget to retrieve package. This should make it more robust wrt external dependencies.

  • load_all will skip missing files with a warning (thanks to suggestion from Jeff Laake)

  • check automatically deletes .Rcheck directory on successful completion

  • Quote the path to R so it works even if there are spaces in the path.

devtools 0.1

CRAN release: 2011-06-22

  • Check for presence of DESCRIPTION when loading packages to avoid false positives

  • install now works correctly with devel_mode to install packages in your development library

  • release prints news so you can more easily check it

  • All R CMD xxx functions now use the current R, not the first R found on the system path.