Chapter 3 R package set up

Building R packages requires that Rtools be installed.

Additionally, there are several R packages that will be required throughout the workflow.
1. devtools
2. usethis
3. roxygen

Data import and analysis packages will be discussed in later sections.

3.1 Basic package initialization

1. From RStudio, select “create new project” -> “New Directory” -> “New R Package”. It is recommended that during this process a git repo also be created.
   
2. Edit the DESCRIPTION file. At this point you can do a build and reload to check the package structure is working.
   
3. Create a README file (usethis::use_readme_rmd). Edit details as required. Render the document to create the README.md file that is used by github to display project details on the repo start up page.
   
4. FishNet2 archive files are stored in a special directory (data-raw) that will be ignored in the package build process. This allows the package structure to be self-contained but not included in the distributed package files. The directory structure is created using (usethis::use_data_raw()).

The package structure is now complete. Successive steps will be discussed in the following chapters.