[R] Putting together a constantly evolving package

[Steve Lianoglou]

Hi all,

I'm putting together some common code + data into a custom package,  
everything is working out fine, but the ``R CMD INSTALL MyPackage``  
call seems to take a particularly long time in the "**data" step:

$ R CMD INSTALL MyPackage/
* installing to library ‘/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/ 
library’
* installing *source* package ‘ MyPackage’ ...
** R
** data

(here)

I have a handful of not-very-big *.rda files in my data dir, but also  
a rather large sqlite db.

Is R trying to do anything in particular to my data during the  
install? index or something? Is there anything I can do to make this  
step go faster?

If this were a 1-time install, it wouldn't matter, but since this  
package is evolving as I'm using it, I find myself constantly needing  
to tweak some code here, or change something there, and this always  
requires another round of R CMD INSTALLing ...

Is there something I can do to make this cycle turn around quicker?  
How do you guys deal with growing a package organically during your  
analyses?

For this particular situation, I reckon I can create a separate  
package for my dataset since its static (and I might do eventually  
down the road, anyway), but I'm wondering if there are other  
alternatives.

Thanks,
-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