[R-pkg-devel] My package CECPfuns on github has branches main and gh-pages badly out of synch

[Chris Evans]

Thanks very much.

Ouch, well clearly it would have been a help had I known to do that.  
Got it and you are correct: whipping long quiescent neurons into action 
finally sorted this out.  It's edge or corner case stuff here I guess 
but may be useful to have in the archives for someone else some day.

What I had forgotten was that I had used the pkgdown package to invoke 
the gh-pages branch (done automatically I think which contributed to my 
forgetting it). That, with a CNAME entry in my DNS four years back, maps 
cpsyctc.github.io to https://cecpfuns.psyctc.org/ (the URL is given to 
github via the first line of _pkgdown.yml). That means that github then 
magically does the pkgdown thing updating the gh-pages branch and that 
is then accessible at https://cecpfuns.psyctc.org/.  As far as I can 
see, the ahead:behind count for the gh-pages branch in github is pretty 
meaningless here.  Someone please correct me if I am wrong about that.

What threw me off was another bit of forgetting: though I was updating 
the package version number in NEWS.md, I was forgetting to update it in 
DESCRIPTION so when I looked at https://cecpfuns.psyctc.org/ I saw the 
old version number and thought the process wasn't working.

Solved!  I have added some notes, largely to myself to make up for 
crumbling memory, to my Rblog (https://www.psyctc.org/Rblog/) at
https://www.psyctc.org/Rblog/posts/2021-02-10-making-my-first-usable-package/#using-github-pages-and-pkgdown-to-create-a-page-about-the-package

Apologies for bandwidth and thanks again for the list,

Chris


On 06/08/2025 17:00, Michael Chirico wrote:
> Hey Chris,
>
> Have a look at the actual list of commits in your gh-pages vs. main 
> branches, I suspect you'll spot what's going on pretty quickly :)
>
> https://github.com/cpsyctc/CECPfuns/commits/gh-pages/
>
> vs
>
> https://github.com/cpsyctc/CECPfuns/commits/main/
>
> Mike C
>
> On Wed, Aug 6, 2025 at 8:56 AM Chris Evans <chrishold using psyctc.org> wrote:
>
>     Sorry for a very trivial issue at one edge of R package
>     management: use
>     of github.
>
>     My package (https://github.com/cpsyctc/CECPfuns) is mostly very
>     simple
>     as I am entirely self-taught as a statistics user and R programmer
>     and
>     as I am ageing!   (I was a fairly good psychiatrist and
>     psychotherapist
>     and still am a pretty productive researcher I think!)
>
>     The package is mostly aimed at people like me who find R amazingly
>     helpful but who sometimes struggle with the documentation,
>     warnings and
>     error messages. Hence a lot of it is trivial but is trying to wrap
>     things up to give end users reasonable help, the odd vignette (not
>     enough currently) and good input sanity checking and non-geek worded
>     warnings and errors.
>
>     OK enough of the apologies.  I have always found git and github in
>     the
>     "dark arts" side of things but I thought that pushing my commits
>     (from
>     within a package worked on locally in Rstudio) was working for
>     updating
>     the package and mostly I thought the evidence was that it was. 
>     Clearly
>     I wasn't checking well enough.
>
>     At some point I clearly created a gh-pages branch and I think that
>     was
>     to get github to create the user friendly html page(s) about the
>     package.  Reading the web now and trying to separate up to date
>     from old
>     advice from out of date advice I think this is no longer necessary
>     and I
>     could get the html from the main branch and ditch the gh-pages branch.
>
>     However, as the subject line says, I now see that the two branches
>     are
>     badly out of synch. Github says that main is my default branch and
>     gh-pages an active branch and at the moment both say they were last
>     updated six hours ago which was when I last pushed changes up. 
>     However,
>     gh-pages says its behind:ahead count is 100:31 which sounds nasty
>     and I
>     don't think my use of pkgdown and things in /doc and /docs are
>     updating
>     correctly.
>
>     Having scoured the web for help on this I am rattled and reaching out
>     for hel. As I say above, I think using gh-pages is no longer
>     necessary
>     and I would like to synchronise the two branches if that is possible
>     then delete the gh-pages branch and then get my courage up and try to
>     get back to understanding how best to document things with github
>     pages
>     and with pkgdown.
>
>     I know this is very small beer against the fascinating things I read
>     here but I hope someone can look at my mess and point me to safe ways
>     forward.
>
>     Thanks in advance and more generally, thanks for the list which is,
>     though often way beyond what I need, always educational for me.
>
>     Chris
>
>     -- 
>     Chris Evans (he/him)
>     Visiting Professor, UDLA, Quito, Ecuador
>     CORE site: http://www.coresystemtrust.org.uk
>     <https://www.coresystemtrust.org.uk/>
>     Other work web site: https://www.psyctc.org/psyctc/
>     Personal site: https://www.psyctc.org/pelerinage2016/
>
>     ______________________________________________
>     R-package-devel using r-project.org mailing list
>     https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
>
-- 
Chris Evans (he/him)
Visiting Professor, UDLA, Quito, Ecuador
CORE site: http://www.coresystemtrust.org.uk 
<https://www.coresystemtrust.org.uk/>
Other work web site: https://www.psyctc.org/psyctc/
Personal site: https://www.psyctc.org/pelerinage2016/
<https://ombook.psyctc.org/book>