available CRAN vignettes - r

There's the available.packages() function to list all packages available on CRAN. Is there a similar function to find all available vignettes? If not how would I get a list of all vignettes and the packages they're associated with?
As a corner case to keep in mind the data.table package has 3 vignettes associated with it.
EDIT: Per Andrie's response I realize I wasn't clear. I know about the vignette function for finding all the available local vignettes, I'm after a way to get all the vignettes of all packages on CRAN.

I seem to recall looking at this in response to some SO question (can't find it now) and deciding that since the information isn't included in the output of available.packages(), nor in the result of applying readRDS to #CRAN/web/packages/packages.rds (a trick from Jeroen Ooms), I couldn't think of a non-scraping way to do it ...
Here's my scraper, applied to the first 100 packages (leading to 44 vignettes)
pkgs <- unname(available.packages()[, 1])[1:100]
vindex_urls <- paste0(getOption("repos"),"/web/packages/", pkgs,
"/vignettes/index.rds", sep = "")
getf <- function(x) {
## I think there should be a way to do this directly
## with readRDS(url(...)) but I can't get it to work
suppressWarnings(
download.file(x,"tmp.rds",quiet=TRUE))
readRDS("tmp.rds")
}
library(plyr)
vv <- ldply(vindex_urls,
.progress="text",
function(x) {
if (inherits(z <- try(getf(x),silent=TRUE),
"try-error")) NULL else z
})
tmpf <- function(x,n) { if (is.null(x)) NULL else
data.frame(pkg=n,x) }
vframe <- do.call(rbind,mapply(tmpf,vv,pkgs))
rownames(vframe) <- NULL
head(vframe[,c("pkg","Title")])
There may be ways to clean this up/make it more compact, but it seems to work OK. Your scrape once/update occasionally strategy seems reasonable. Or if you wanted you could scrape daily (or weekly or whatever seems reasonable) and save/post the results somewhere publicly accessible, then include a function with that URL hard-coded in the package ... or even create a nicely formatted HTML table, with links, that the whole world could use (and then add Viagra ads to the page, and $$PROFIT$$ ...)
edit: wrapped both the download and the readRDS in a function, so I can wrap the whole thing in try

The functions vignette() and browseVignettes() list all vignettes of packages installed on your machine.
vignette(package="data.table")
Vignettes in package ‘data.table’:
datatable-faq Frequently asked questions (source, pdf)
datatable-intro Quick introduction (source, pdf)
datatable-timings Timings of common tasks (source, pdf)
browseVignettes() is especially helpful since it creates a web page with hyperlinks:
browseVignettes(package="data.table")
Vignettes found by browseVignettes(package = "data.table")
Vignettes in package data.table
Frequently asked questions - PDF R LaTeX/noweb
Quick introduction - PDF R LaTeX/noweb
Timings of common tasks - PDF R LaTeX/noweb

Related

Determining which version of a function is active when many packages are loaded

If I have multiple packages loaded that define functions of the same name, is there an easy way to determine which version of the function is currently the active one? Like, lets say I have base R, the tidyverse, and a bunch of time series packages loaded. I'd like a function which_package("intersect") that would tell me the package name of the active version of the intersect function. I know you can go back and look at all the warning messages you recieved when installing packages, but I think that sort of manual search is not only tedious but also error-prone.
There is a function here that does sort of what I want, except it produces a table for all conflicts rather than the value for one function. I would actually be quite happy with that, and would also accept a similar function as an answer, but I have had problems with the implimentation of function given. As applied to my examples, it inserts vast amounts of white space and many duplicates of the package names (e.g. the %>% function shows up with 132 packages listed), making the output hard to read and hard to use. It seems like it should be easy to remove the white space and duplicates, and I have spent considerable time on various approaches that I expected to work but which had no impact on the outcome.
So, for an example of many conflicts:
install.packages(pkg = c("tidyverse", "fpp3", "tsbox", "rugarch", "Quandl", "DREGAR", "dynlm", "zoo", "GGally", "dyn", "ARDL", "bigtime", "BigVAR", "dLagM", "VARshrink")
lapply(x = c("tidyverse", "fable", "tsbox", "rugarch", "Quandl", "DREGAR", "dynlm", "zoo", "GGally", "dyn", "ARDL", "bigtime", "BigVAR", "dLagM", "VARshrink"),
library, character.only = TRUE)
You can pull this information with your own function helper.
which_package <- function(fun) {
if(is.character(fun)) fun <- getFunction(fun)
stopifnot(is.function(fun))
x <- environmentName(environment(fun))
if (!is.null(x)) return(x)
}
This will return R_GlobalEnv for functions that you define in the global environment. There is also the packageName function if you really want to restrict it to packages only.
For example
library(MASS)
library(dplyr)
which_package(select)
# [1] "dplyr"

running all examples in r package

I am developing a package in Rstudio. Many of my examples need updating so I am going through each one. The only way to check the examples is by running devtools::check() but of course this runs all the checks and it takes a while.
Is there a way of just running the examples so I don't have to wait?
Try the following code to run all examples
devtools::run_examples()
You can also do this without devtools, admittedly it's a bit more circuitous.
package = "rgl"
# this gives a key-value mapping of the various `\alias{}`es
# in each Rd file to that file's canonical name
aliases <- readRDS(system.file("help", "aliases.rds", package=package))
# or sapply(unique(aliases), example, package=package, character.only=TRUE),
# but I think the for loop is superior in this case.
for (topic in unique(aliases)) example(topic, package=package, character.only = TRUE)

How to find out if I am using a package

My R script has evolved over many months with many additions and subtractions. It is long and rambling and I would like to find out which packages I am actually using in the code so I can start deleting library() references. Is there a way of finding redundant dependencies in my R script?
I saw this question so I tried:
library(mvbutils)
library(MyPackage)
library(dplyr)
foodweb( funs=find.funs( asNamespace( 'EndoMineR')), where=
asNamespace( 'EndoMineR'), prune='filter')
But that really tells me where I am using a function from a package whereas I don't necessarily remember which functions I have used from which package.
I tried packrat but this is looking for projects whereas mine is a directory of scripts I am trying to build into a package.
To do this you first parse your file and then use getAnywhere to check for each terminal token in which namespace it is defined. Compare the result with the searchpath and you will have the answer. I compiled a function that takes a filename as argument and returns the packages which are used in the file. Note that it can only find packages that are loaded when the function is executed, so be sure to load all "candidates" first.
findUsedPackages <- function(sourcefile) {
## get parse tree
parse_data <- getParseData(parse(sourcefile))
## extract terminal tokens
terminal_tokens <- parse_data[parse_data$terminal == TRUE, "text"]
## get loaded packages/namespaces
search_path <- search()
## helper function to find the package a token belongs to
findPackage <- function(token) {
## get info where the token is defined
token_info <- getAnywhere(token)
##return the package the comes first in the search path
token_info$where[which.min(match(token_info$where, search_path))]
}
packages <- lapply(unique(terminal_tokens), findPackage)
##remove elements that do not belong to a loaded namespace
packages <- packages[sapply(packages, length) > 0]
packages <- do.call(c, packages)
packages <- unique(packages)
##do not return base and .GlobalEnv
packages[-which(packages %in% c("package:base", ".GlobalEnv"))]
}

Uninstall (remove) R package with dependencies

I wanted to try some new package. I installed it, it required a lot of dependencies, so it installed plenty of other packages. I tried it and I am not impressed - now I would like to uninstall that package including all the dependencies!
Is there any way to remove given packages including all dependencies which are not needed by any other package in the system?
I looked at ?remove.packages but there is no option to do this.
Here is some code that will all you to remove a package and its unneeded dependencies. Note that its interpretation of "unneeded" dependent packages is the set of packages that this package depends on but that are not used in any other package. This means that it will also default to suggesting to uninstall packages that have no reverse dependencies. Thus I've implemented it as an interactive menu (like in update.packages) to give you control over what to uninstall.
library("tools")
removeDepends <- function(pkg, recursive = FALSE){
d <- package_dependencies(,installed.packages(), recursive = recursive)
depends <- if(!is.null(d[[pkg]])) d[[pkg]] else character()
needed <- unique(unlist(d[!names(d) %in% c(pkg,depends)]))
toRemove <- depends[!depends %in% needed]
if(length(toRemove)){
toRemove <- select.list(c(pkg,sort(toRemove)), multiple = TRUE,
title = "Select packages to remove")
remove.packages(toRemove)
return(toRemove)
} else {
invisible(character())
}
}
# Example
install.packages("YplantQMC") # installs an unneeded dependency "LeafAngle"
c("YplantQMC","LeafAngle") %in% installed.packages()[,1]
## [1] TRUE TRUE
removeDepends("YplantQMC")
c("YplantQMC","LeafAngle") %in% installed.packages()[,1]
## [1] FALSE FALSE
Note: The recursive option may be particularly useful. If package dependencies further depend on other unneeded packages, setting recursive = TRUE is vital. If dependencies are shallow (i.e., only one level down the dependency tree), this can be left as FALSE (the default).
There is in fact a function remove.packages() in base R, but it's in the package utils, which you need to load first:
library(utils)
remove.packages()
It's not entirely clear to me how much recursive cleanup this function does.
There are base R ways to handle this but I'm going to recommend a package (I know you're trying to get rid of these). I'm recommending this package for 2 reasons (1) it solves two problems you're having & (2) Dason K. and I are developing this package (full disclosure). This package's value stands in that the functions are easier to remember names that are consistent. It also does some combined operations. Note you could do all of this in base but this question is already pretty localized so thus I'm going to use a tool that makes answering easier.
This package will:
allow you to delete package and dependencies
allow you to install packages in a temporary directory rather than main library
The caveat is that you can't be 100% certain that the package dependency wasn't already there, installed by the user previously. Therefore I would take caution with every step of this solution that you're not deleting things that are of importance. This solution relies on 2 factors (1) pacman (2) file.info. We'll assume that dependencies that were modified within a certain (user defined) threshold of time are indeed unwanted packages. Note the word assume here.
I made this reproducible for the folks at home in that the answer will randomly install a package from CRAN with additional dependencies (this installs a package you do not already have locally with 3 or more dependencies; used random to not single out any package).
Making a reproducible example
library(pacman)
(available <- p_cran())
(randoms <- setdiff(available, p_lib()))
(mypackages <- p_lib())
ndeps <- 1
while(ndeps < 3) {
package <- sample(randoms, 1)
deps <- unlist(p_depends(package, character.only=TRUE), use.names=FALSE)
ndeps <- length(setdiff(deps, mypackages))
}
package
p_install(package, character.only = TRUE)
Uninstalling package
We will assign the package name from the first part to package or the OP can use the unwanted package they installed and assign that to package (my random package happened to be package <- "OrdinalLogisticBiplot"). This deletions process should, ideally, be done in a clean R session with no add-on packages (except pacman) loaded.
## function to grab file info date/time modified
infograb <- function(x) file.info(file.path(p_path(), x))[["mtime"]]
## determine the differences in times modified for "package"
## and all other packages in library
diffs <- as.numeric(infograb(package)) - sapply(p_lib(), infograb)
## user defined threshold
threshold <- 15
## determine packages just installed within the time frame of the unwanted package
(delete_deps <- diffs[diffs < threshold & diffs >= 0])
## recursively find all packages that could have been installed
potential_depends <- unlist(lapply(unlist(p_depends(package, character=TRUE)),
p_depends, character=TRUE, recursive=TRUE))
## delete packages that are both on the lists of (1) installed within time
## frame of unwanted package and a dependency of that package
p_delete(intersect(names(delete_deps), potential_depends), character.only = TRUE)
This approach makes some big assumptions.
A better approach from the get go
p_temp(package_to_try)
This allows you to try it out first and not have it muddy your local library.
If you're unimpressed with pacman you can use the method described above to delete it.
Here is a quick solution to have a look at the packages that are not required by any other locally installed packages.
library(pacman)
ip <- installed.packages()[,1]
deps <- lapply(1:length(ip), function(i) tryCatch(p_depends(ip[i], local = TRUE)$Imports, error = function(e) return(NULL)))
packages.on.which.things.depend <- sort(unique(unlist(deps)))
packages.on.which.nothing.depends <- setdiff(ip, packages.on.which.things.depend)
packages.on.which.nothing.depends
Then, have a quick look at it and remove the ones you are not using (just be careful and do not try to uninstall base).
After you have determined which ones you use and which you don’t use, you may proceed with something like
i.need <- c("AER", "car", "devtools", "glmnet", "gmm", "Hmisc", "pacman", "plm", "RcppArmadillo", "RcppEigen", "rmarkdown", "rugarch", "base", "datasets")
un <- setdiff(packages.on.which.nothing.depends, i.need)
un
remove.packages(un)
Rinse and repeat until there are no unneeded orphanes packages. R should not allow you to remove built-in system packages.

R Package development: overriding a function from one package with a function from another?

I am currently working on developing two packages, below is a simplified
version of my problem:
In package A I have some functions (say "sum_twice"), and I it calls to
another function inside the package (say "slow_sum").
However, in package B, I wrote another function (say "fast_sum"), with
which I wish to replace the slow function in package A.
Now, how do I manage this "overriding" of the "slow_sum" function with the
"fast_sum" function?
Here is a simplified example of such functions (just to illustrate):
############################
##############
# Functions in package A
slow_sum <- function(x) {
sum_x <- 0
for(i in seq_along(x)) sum_x <- sum_x + x[i]
sum_x
}
sum_twice <- function(x) {
x2 <- rep(x,2)
slow_sum(x2)
}
##############
# A function in package B
fast_sum <- function(x) { sum(x) }
############################
If I only do something like slow_sum <- fast_sum, this would not work, since "sum_twice" uses "slow_sum" from the NAMESPACE
of package A.
I tried using the following function when loading package "B":
assignInNamespace(x = "slow_sum", value = B:::fast_sum, ns = "A")
This indeed works, however, it makes the CRAN checks return both a NOTE on
how I should not use ":::", and also a warning for using assignInNamespace
(since it is supposed to not be very safe).
However, I am at a loss.
What would be a way to have "sum_twice" use "fast_sum" instead of
"slow_sum"?
Thank you upfront for any feedback or suggestion,
With regards,
Tal
p.s: this is a double post from here.
UDPATE: motivation for this question
I am developing two packages, one is based solely on R and works fine (but a bit slow), it is dendextend (which is now on CRAN). The other one is meant to speed up the first package by using Rcpp (this is dendextendRcpp which is on github). The second package speeds up the first by overriding some basic functions the first package uses. But in order for the higher levels functions in the first package will use the lower functions in the second package, I have to use assignInNamespace which leads CRAN to throw warnings+NOTES, which ended up having the package rejected from CRAN (until these warnings will be avoided).
The problem is that I have no idea how to approach this issue. The only solution I can think of is either mixing the two packages together (making it harder to maintain, and will automatically require a larger dependency structure for people asking to use the package). And the other option is to just copy paste the higher level functions from dendextend to dendextendRcpp, and thus have them mask the other functions. But I find this to be MUCH less elegant (because that means I will need to copy-paste MANY functions, forcing more double-code maintenance) . Any other ideas? Thanks.
We could put this in sum_twice:
my_sum_ch <- getOption("my_sum", if ("package:fastpkg" %in% search())
"fast_sum" else "slow_sum")
my_sum <- match.fun(my_sum_ch)
If the "my_sum" option were set then that version of my_sum would be used and if not it would make the decision based on whether or not fastpkg had been loaded.
The solution I ended up using (thanks to Uwe and Kurt), is using "local" to create a localized environment with the package options. If you're curious, the function is called "dendextend_options", and is here:
https://github.com/talgalili/dendextend/blob/master/R/zzz.r
Here is an example for its use:
dendextend_options <- local({
options <- list()
function(option, value) {
# ellipsis <- list(...)
if(missing(option)) return(options)
if(missing(value))
options[[option]]
else options[[option]] <<- value
}
})
dendextend_options("a")
dendextend_options("a", 1)
dendextend_options("a")
dendextend_options("a", NULL)
dendextend_options("a")
dendextend_options()

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