[ESS] [OT] Best Practices Emacs / ESS Mini-Webinars

[Deepayan Sarkar]

On Sat, Jan 2, 2021 at 1:51 AM Stephen Bond <stephen.cbond using yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Happy New Year,
>
> I wrote a short draft of installing ESS through melpa as I favor Prof.
> Sarkar's suggestion to have a readable version:
> https://boring2004.blogspot.com/2021/01/ess.html
> This is not editable, but we are still waiting for the final tool.
> I hope I am saving some time for the more advanced Emacs/Lisp people;
> let me know if I should stay quiet.
>
> Melpa should be the preferred option as installing by double clicking
> on an executable is the RStudio way of doing things and does not lead
> to learning Emacs.

This looks great.

A couple of suggestions along the same lines as Greg, with the view of
giving alternatives to those who prefer typing:

In step 2, follow "Evaluate last S-expression from Emacs-Lisp menu"
with "(keyboard shortcut C-x C-e, or M-x eval-last-sexp)"

For steps 3 and 4, point to https://polymode.github.io/installation/
for other alternatives.

[Where I suppose

(unless (package-installed-p 'polymode)
  (package-install 'poly-markdown))

is a typo and should be

(unless (package-installed-p 'poly-markdown)
  (package-install 'poly-markdown))

instead?]

3. You define (rmd-mode) but don't use it. I assume it is to change
mode explicitly; is it ever useful? You should explain why it could
be.

BTW, an explicit (require 'ess-site) does not seem to be required (at
least for Emacs 27.1). Not sure why.

Best,
-Deepayan

> Cheers
> Stephen
>
>
> On Tue, 2020-12-29 at 19:47 +0530, Deepayan Sarkar wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 29, 2020 at 4:07 AM Dirk Eddelbuettel via ESS-help
> > <ess-help using r-project.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi Stephen,
> > >
> > > On 28 December 2020 at 16:23, Stephen Bond wrote:
> > > > I have been struggling with trying to follow the steps in
> > > > https://r-pkgs.org/ and the best thing would be to have a similar
> > > > online book showing the steps with ESS. the Hadley book is
> > > > chained to
> > > > RStudio and they assume everybody uses RStudio, so many examples
> > > > do not
> > > > work as expected when run inside ESS/emacs. there is also some
> > >
> > > Let's step back. Some of us have been building packages for longer
> > > than
> > > either the book or RStudio existed. The canonical reference is
> > > still WRE.
> > >
> > > FWIW I distilled (short) command-line wrappers off it too, so I use
> > >    build.r      # create a tar.gz
> > >    rcc.r        # check the tar.gz (using rcmdcheck::rcmdcheck)
> > >    check.r      # check the tar.gz (more like R CMD check)
> > >    install.r    # install it
> > > and so on _all the time_ often in a bash shell / tmux session. The
> > > command
> > > are also all callable from Emacs/ESS as commands and e.g. I always
> > > do
> > > compile-command (i.e. C-x C-c, then calling render.r) to process
> > > markdown.
> > > For package building many other people also use devtools; I
> > > understand that
> > > is now integrated with ESS and would be new to me too. There are
> > > (as always)
> > > many ways to go about this.
> > >
> > > > completely undocumented menus like (Select package for
> > > > evaluation) not
> > > > mentioned on the official ESS page:
> > > > https://ess.r-project.org/Manual/ess.html
> > > > I am willing to help and donate time if you can start with such
> > > > an
> > > > online book.
> > >
> > > AFAIK nobody promised a book.  We suggest(ed) and still work on a
> > > series of
> > > *short* and *focused* intros to topics. The current list is at
> > > http://collabedit.com/537yq
> > >
> > > Package building is but one topic, but it would be great if you
> > > could help
> > > with this.
> > >
> > > > Cheers, really happy this may be happening.
> > >
> > > Yes. Let's see if we can pull this off.
> >
> > I'm hoping to learn a lot from this.
> >
> > Although it's not the immediate goal, I think it would be good to
> > eventually have a readable version of the topics covered in the
> > webinars, sort of in-between a book and the docs. I will be happy to
> > help with that effort.
> >
> > Best,
> > -Deepayan
> >
> > > Dirk
> > >
> > > --
> > > https://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd using debian.org
> > >
> > > ______________________________________________
> > > ESS-help using r-project.org mailing list
> > > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/ess-help
>