Step 7: Reboot and Read

After you have fixed your path, I’ll suggest that you take some time to do some reading. The reason for that is nearly all of the problems I had from this point forward had to do with my refusal to RTFM. With all your tools in place the natural tendency is just to rush forward and build a package. I’ve seen other struggle with this as well. The problem is the tools only go so far in building a package. You MUST write or edit some documentation files to have the package build and CHECK properly. That means you have to spend some time getting familiar with the documents produced by the tools.

Start  here

Also pay particular attention to the section on creating Rd files. These files are the source files that are used to create R manuals, help and the other documentation for your package. That discussion starts here in the documentation help

When we come to building a sample package the process will create several files. These files need to be edited or your package will not build or check properly. So, spend some time with the documents. The other thing to note is that it’s hard to understand what your documents will look like when you are editing them in the Rd format. So, I’m on the look out for any tools that will give me a better tool for editing and creating them.

After you’ve spent too little time reading the documents, we can go on to step 8