The Liam Neeson of DESCRIPTION file functions.

  1. I will look for you,

  2. I will find you,

  3. —and I will import you into a neatly parsed R object.

Uses a variety of alternative methods, including searching locally and on GitHub (whenever possible). Prioritises the fastest methods that do not involve downloading files first.

get_description(
  refs = NULL,
  paths = here::here("DESCRIPTION"),
  db = NULL,
  cache_dir = tools::R_user_dir(package = "rworkflows", which = "cache"),
  force_new = FALSE,
  use_wd = TRUE,
  use_repos = FALSE,
  repo = c("BioCsoft", "BioCann", "BioCexp", "BioCworkflows", "CRAN"),
  verbose = TRUE
)

Arguments

refs

Reference for one or more GitHub repository in owner/repo format (e.g."neurogenomics/rworkflows"), or an R package name (e.g. "rworkflows").

paths

Paths to DESCRIPTION file(s) R package(s).

db

A data.table of R package metadata generated by biocPkgList.

cache_dir

Directory where to cache downloaded files.

force_new

Ignore cached files and re-download them instead.

use_wd

Search the local working directory (and the one above it) for DESCRIPTION files.

use_repos

Use R standard R package repositories like CRAN and Bioc to find DESCRIPTION files.

repo

The requested Bioconductor repository. The default will be the Bioconductor software repository: BioCsoft. Available repos include: "BioCsoft", "BioCann", "BioCexp", "BioCworkflows", and "CRAN". Note that not all repos are available for all versions, particularly older versions (but who would use those, right?).

verbose

Print messages.

Value

A named list of packageDescription objects.

Examples

d <- get_description(refs="neurogenomics/rworkflows")