[R] Looking for a better way to document my packages

[baptiste auguie]

Hi,

I know of three options that resemble your query,

- the roxygen package

- a ruby script called weeder by Hadley Wikham

- the inlinedocs package on r-forge

I only ever used roxygen though, so i can't speak for the relative
merits of the others.

HTH,

baptiste


2009/10/1 Steve Lianoglou <mailinglist.honeypot at gmail.com>:
> Hi all,
>
> Trying to do what my subject says.
>
> As I'm trying to be better about making packages out of my code, I'd like
> the packages themselves to be better, which means *.Rd-documenting my code.
> The thing is, from years of programming other languages prior to landing in
> the R pond, I've grown accustomed to documenting my functions inline. I'm
> not just used to it, but I like it more than having function documentation
> completely removed from my function, code.
>
> So, for example
>
> myNeatFunction <- function(arg1, arg2, arg3=NULL, ...) {
>  # One liner describing the neat thing this function does.
>  #
>  # More comments, probably very much what would be in the
>  # \description section of the *Rd
>  #
>  # Parameters
>  # ----------
>  # arg1 : <some comments>
>  # arg2 : <some comments>
>  # ... This is essentially the same exact stuff that would
>  # be in the \arguments{} section of the *.Rd
>  #
>  # Returns
>  # -------
>  # A description of what's returned, let's say this is
>  # what you'd find in the \value{} section.
>  #
>  # Notes
>  # -----
>  # Maybe something like the \details{} section, though this
>  # might as well be up in the description section, too.
>  # etc.
> }
>
> There's essentially a 1-to-1 mapping of the comments I write here and what I
> would write in an *.Rd file, but I'd rather have it written in my function
> definition than an external document.
>
> Are there any tools that help facilitate this? Or are there better ways you
> folks have figured out to do something similar?
>
> I don't need the function comment block to be exactly what I showed here,
> but it's just an example of how I'm currently writing my stuff. I'm thinking
> something like sphinx (http://sphinx.pocoo.org/) from the python world would
> be cool. Perhaps there's a way to make a plugin for that to parse R-code.
> That's more work than I want to bit off right now, but if there isn't
> something useful in R-land already, it might be a fun side project.
>
> Just curious,
> -steve
>
> --
> Steve Lianoglou
> Graduate Student: Computational Systems Biology
>  |  Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
>  |  Weill Medical College of Cornell University
> Contact Info: http://cbio.mskcc.org/~lianos/contact
>
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