develcoder

develcoder is an R package containing code and templates to develop R packages. It is based on the book R packages by Hadley Wickham and Jennifer Bryan, using R packages devtools and usethis. I use tinytest instead of testthat for unit tests.

Structure

Folder vignettes contains the following vignettes:

• package setup vignette("pkg_setup", package = "develcoder") contains code that is needed only once to set up a package from scratch.
• package development vignette("pkg_devel", package = "develcoder") contains code that is useful during package development, including when preparing to release a new package version and setting up for a new version.
• R Markdown and knitr vignette("rmarkdown_knitr", package = "develcoder") contains information about using R Markdown and knitr.

Folder inst/templates contains the following templates (in the installed package these are in develcoder/templates):

• README_template.Rmd for a README.Rmd file, to be put in the top-directory of <pkg>.
• check-no-suggests.yaml for a GitHub Actions workflow checking if the package code can be run if the suggested packages are not installed
• check-standard.yaml for a GitHub Actions workflow
• pkgdown.yaml for a GitHub Actions workflow to update the package website

To use these files, put the README.Rmd file in the top-directory of <pkg>. The yaml files should be put in <pkg>\.github\workflows (see the section Automate checks in the vignette package setup and the section Use GitHub Actions in the vignette package development for details).

Installation

Visit the develcoder website to explore the package, or install develcoder from GitHub using the following R code (you need to run R as administrator):

if(!requireNamespace("remotes", quietly = TRUE)) {
   install.packages(pkgs = "remotes", quiet = FALSE)
}
remotes::install_github(repo = "JesseAlderliesten/develcoder",
                        dependencies = NA, upgrade = FALSE, force = FALSE,
                        quiet = FALSE, build_vignettes = TRUE, lib = NULL,
                        verbose = getOption("verbose"))

For more information about installing and configuring R and RStudio, see my package checkrpkgs.

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT License.

Citation

To cite package 'develcoder' in publications use:

  Alderliesten J (2026). _develcoder: Code and Templates to Develop R
  Packages_. R package version 0.9.0,
  <https://github.com/JesseAlderliesten/develcoder>.

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

  @Manual{,
    title = {develcoder: Code and Templates to Develop R Packages},
    author = {Jesse Alderliesten},
    year = {2026},
    note = {R package version 0.9.0},
    url = {https://github.com/JesseAlderliesten/develcoder},
  }

Similar resources

• The book R packages by H. Wickham and J. Bryan
• The chapter Building R Packages of Mastering Software Development in R by R. D. Peng, S. Kross, and B. Anderson.
• Slides from the workshop Building tidy tools by E. Rand and I. Lyttle
• The section Documentation and help in the package development vignette contains further references.
• Package packagepal