[R] Demo files in R packages

[Koenker, Roger W]

I too find demos quite useful, particularly for my REBayes package for which documented examples are useless since CRAN checking doesn’t or at least didn’t have an installed Mosek capability.  I’ve taken to adding references to them in the body of the roxyen2 documentation but this is a bit hit or miss.  Fortunately, as Micheal says demo(package = “foo”) still works provided that users are aware of it.  I would also be interested in other creative solutions to make them more visible.

Roger 


> On Jan 25, 2026, at 10:44 AM, Michael L Friendly <friendly using yorku.ca> wrote:
> 
> I know I can put them into a vignette, but the advantage of demo files is that you can run them using demo().
> It just seems like the facilities for demo files were abandoned.
> 
> -Michael
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan using gmail.com> 
> Sent: January 24, 2026 6:02 PM
> To: Michael L Friendly <friendly using yorku.ca>; R-help using r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R] Demo files in R packages
> 
> On 2026-01-24 4:49 p.m., Michael L Friendly wrote:
>> Before vignettes were established as a way to document a package, there were demos, R files in a `demo/` folder with a `demo/00-Index` file giving their contents.
>> Used as `demo(package="...")` this gave a window with a list and titles, and `demo("example1", package="...") ran `demo/example1.R` in the console.
>> It was also a good way to give a pointer to something more extensive than you wanted to include in the examples for a function or dataset.
>> 
>> This idea still works for R packages, but is not available for use in roxygen2 documentation, or pkgdown sites.
>> I have several packages with collections of demo/ files, and am wondering if there is anything further I can do with them to make them accessible.
> 
> I converted most of my demo files in rgl to a single vignette.  I just added a simple paragraph
> 
>> This vignette holds code that was previously included as "demos" 
>> in `rgl`.  Some of the demos require R to be running; those remain 
>> available via `demo(package = "rgl")`.
> 
> As the second sentence indicates, rgl still has a few demos, mostly Shiny examples.
> 
> Conversion was simple:  just copy the title into a heading, and include all the code.
> 
> Duncan Murdoch
> ______________________________________________
> R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help__;!!DZ3fjg!9JAEtHwhqq2bhNITvwUxzNd_yVeNP1ijh99HnlVKpoq55zBGZ-Qvbs1r0tjCqVsbM4Or3_Lx9QWFluvaLBYLQg$
> PLEASE do read the posting guide https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html__;!!DZ3fjg!9JAEtHwhqq2bhNITvwUxzNd_yVeNP1ijh99HnlVKpoq55zBGZ-Qvbs1r0tjCqVsbM4Or3_Lx9QWFluvwC65ABA$
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.