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Makefile generator for R analytical projects

Source: R/rmake.R
rmake-package.Rd

rmake creates and maintains a build process for complex analytic tasks in R. The package allows easy generation of a Makefile for the (GNU) 'make' tool, which drives the build process by executing build commands (in parallel) to update results according to given dependencies on changed data or updated source files.

Details

Note: The package requires the R_HOME environment variable to be properly set.

Basic Usage

Suppose you have a file dataset.csv. You want to pre-process it and store the results in dataset.rds using the preprocess.R R script. After that, dataset.rds is then an input file for report.Rmd and details.Rmd, which are R-Markdown scripts that generate report.pdf and details.pdf. The whole project can be initialized with rmake as follows:

  1. Let us assume that you have the rmake package as well as the make tool properly installed.

  2. Create a new directory (or an R studio project) and copy your dataset.csv into it.

  3. Load the rmake package and create skeleton files for it:
    library(rmake)
    rmakeSkeleton('.')

    Makefile.R and Makefile will be created in the current directory ('.').

  4. Create your files preprocess.R, report.Rmd, and details.Rmd.

  5. Edit Makefile.R as follows:
    library(rmake)
    job <- list(
    rRule('dataset.rds', 'preprocess.R', 'dataset.csv'),
    markdownRule('report.pdf', 'report.Rmd', 'dataset.rds'),
    markdownRule('details.pdf', 'details.Rmd', 'dataset.rds')
    )
    makefile(job, "Makefile")

    This will create three build rules: one for processing preprocess.R and two for executing report.Rmd and details.Rmd to generate the resulting PDF files.

  6. Run make or build your project in R Studio (Build/Build all). This will automatically re-generate the Makefile and execute preprocess.R and the generation of report.Rmd and details.Rmd according to the changes made to the source files.

See also

Useful links:

Author

Maintainer: Michal Burda michal.burda@osu.cz (ORCID)