[R-pkg-devel] Announcing Bazel for R packages

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 21 September 2017 at 22:40, Siddhartha Bagaria wrote:
| We have released some Bazel rules for R packages.
| https://github.com/grailbio/rules_r
| 
| What is Bazel?
| 
| Bazel <https://bazel.build/> is an industry tested build system that can be
| used for continuous integration and testing in large monorepos (multiple
| software libraries as part of one repository).
| 
| When should you use Bazel for your R packages?
| 
| 1. Continuous integration and testing
| If your organization already uses Bazel, and you have R packages as part of
| the same repo. These rules will run unit tests or R CMD check on changes to
| your package, or any dependency as part of the same build system that your
| organization uses. You can also deploy docker images with your R packages
| installed in them as part of your continuous integration.
| 
| 2. Reproducible builds
| Using Bazel will force you to fix versions of your package dependencies,
| and every build will be reproducible. Updates to package dependencies can
| then be vetted and be done incrementally if desired. This is an alternative
| to maintaining a private repository of CRAN/Bioc packages or using a CRAN
| snapshot service.
| 
| If these do not concern you, then you should not consider Bazel because of
| the additional complexity introduced.
| 
| I am happy to answer any questions you may have.

Are you aware of any bazel users outside of Google and its spin-offs,
including Grail?

Dirk

-- 
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org