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Set up a GitHub Action workflow

Source: R/add_github_action.R
add_github_action.Rd

This function sets up a continuous integration (CI) for an R project hosted on GitHub. It creates a configuration file (.yaml) to setup a specific GitHub Action (see below).

Available workflows are derived from https://github.com/r-lib/actions/tree/v2-branch/examples and are hosted on a different repository https://github.com/FRBCesab/r-templates/tree/main/actions.

Configuration files will be written in .github/workflows/.

Usage

add_github_action(name, open = FALSE, overwrite = FALSE, quiet = FALSE)

Arguments

name

A character of length 1. The name of the GitHub Action to set up. Run get_available_gh_actions() to list available GitHub Actions.

open

A logical value. If TRUE (default) the file is opened in the editor.

overwrite

A logical value. If this file is already present and overwrite = TRUE, it will be erased and replaced. Default is FALSE.

quiet

A logical value. If TRUE messages are deleted. Default is FALSE.

Value

No return value.

Details

Here is a list of commonly used GitHub Actions that will be triggered after each push or pull request:

  • R-CMD-check: check the package integrity on three major operating systems (Ubuntu, macOS, and Windows) using the latest release of R. The package is also checked on Ubuntu (latest version) using the development and previous versions of R.

  • test-coverage: compute and report the code coverage (i.e. the proportion of R code covered by unit tests) to https://about.codecov.io/.

  • pkgdown: build and publish the pkgdown website of the package on a dedicated gh-pages branch. The repository may need further configuration (see usethis::use_pkgdown_github_pages()).

  • check-format: set up the Air formatter for R and check the code format. This action will fail if any files need to be reformatted with Air.

  • render-README: render the README.Rmd only if it has been modified. This action will commit and push the updated README.md to the main branch. User need to fetch the new version.

  • update-Rd-files: update the package documentation files (Rd files and NAMESPACE). This action will commit and push the updated files to the main branch. User need to fetch the new version.

  • update-citation-cff: update the CITATION.cff, a human- and machine-readable citation information file. This action is triggered if the DESCRIPTION file and/or the inst/CITATION file is modified. This action will commit and push the updated CITATION.cff to the main branch. User need to fetch the new version.

  • update-codemeta: update the codemeta.json, a standardized metadata file for software (not only R packages). This action is triggered if the DESCRIPTION file and/or the inst/CITATION file and/or the README.md is modified. This action will commit and push the updated codemeta.json to the main branch. User need to fetch the new version.

If one of these GitHub Actions is added to the project, this function will also create a dependabot.yaml file in .github/. This action will be triggered once a week to check for dependency updates (used by any GitHub Action of the repository). If an update is available, this bot will open a Pull Request and user will be invited to review changes.

See also

Other development functions: add_dependabot(), add_dependencies(), add_r_depend(), add_to_buildignore(), add_to_gitignore()

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
add_github_action(name = "R-CMD-check")
} # }