[R-pkg-devel] speeding up package code/build/test cycle

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 24/06/2021 5:15 a.m., Greg Minshall wrote:
> hi.
> 
> when developing packages, my current work flow is to change the code,
> (re-)build the package, detach/load the package, test (to find the
> N+1'st bug, sigh).
> 
> the building step takes tens of seconds.
> 
> is there an obvious way to present some code to the R command line and
> have it replace the appropriate function in a given package?
> 
> or, are there other things people do to speed up this process?

Wolfgang pointed out the devtools way to do this.  I don't use that for 
rgl (a pretty slow 75 second from scratch), but I find R CMD INSTALL 
pkgdir works fast enough:  if C++ source has already been compiled, it 
won't be compiled again, as it would be if I installed from a tarball. 
A second build after a clean build takes about 15 seconds.  That's 
acceptable for me.

A disadvantage of the devtools method is that a regular build after 
load_all() seems to do a full 75 sec build:  load_all caches things for 
itself, but doesn't put them in the same place as a regular build, so 
make doesn't see the object files, and rebuilds all of them.  Or at 
least it did that last time I tried it, a few months ago.

As Dirk said, you can also use command line options to suppress building 
vignettes or other things if they take too long.

Duncan Murdoch