Great question! We are planning to ship the 1.0 version very soon (before the end of October if all goes well, and even earlier if all goes according to plan!). Subscribe to the RStudio blog to see the announcement.
The new version includes an option to point RStudio Package Manager at a Git endpoint. You specify whether Package Manager should track commits or tags, and then Package Manager watches the endpoint and upon finding a new commit or tag:
- Pulls the code
- If you're tracking commits, it updates the version number so that each commit has a unique version #
- Runs
R CMD build to generate a source tar file
- Makes the source tar file available in a repository, where users can install via
install.packages
You can see an example of each mode here:
- Tracking Tags: https://demo.rstudiopm.com/client/#/repos/9/activity
- Tracking Commits: https://demo.rstudiopm.com/client/#/repos/8/activity
In the future we plan on adding two complementary features:
- Adding the ability to run
R CMD install to create a binary version of the package that can be cached in addition to the source tar file
- Adding the ability to run
R CMD check as part of the process and an option to only make the package available if the check passes.
Both of these features require a more complete understanding of the system requirements necessary for any given CRAN package to run on a specific Linux architecture (e.g. a Docker container). We are working on that database of system requirements now.
Additionally, because RStudio Package Manager is driven by a CLI, you could create your own workflow today, e.g.
- Push to Git
- Use a CI service like Jenkins or Travis to test and build the package
- Have the CI service copy the resulting package source file to RStudio Package Manager and execute the CLI command to add it to the repository
Let me know if you have any questions, and w'e love your feedback when you get a chance to try out either option.
You can also learn more:
http://docs.rstudio.com/rspm/1.0.0/admin/quickstarts.html#quickstart-local-git
http://docs.rstudio.com/rspm/1.0.0/admin/repositories.html#git-sources
https://resources.rstudio.com/webinars/introduction-to-the-rstudio-package-manager-sean-lopp (minute 34)