Project-oriented workflow

[maurolepore]

• Slides.
• Video.

Resources:

• https://www.tidyverse.org/blog/2017/12/workflow-vs-script/
• https://rstats.wtf/project-oriented-workflow.html

[maurolepore]

@vintented reminded me of how challenging it is to make 2dii projects self contained, and to move them around -- for example to move them out from a folder that can be reach with "a horrible/path" and into a folder that can be reached with "a-nicer/path".

@vintented,

@cjyetman and I have been discussing this problem and we would appreciate your help. We developed two functions that can help you access data in 2dii's dropbox folder from anywhere. To the best of my understanding, this means you are free to move your R project to anywhere in your computer. But it appears you found other barriers I don't understand. Can you please share more details about the limitation you see so we can think of a solution?

[cjyetman]

I recently came to understand an additional problem (beyond trying to access the raw data in Dropbox through ill advised path settings)...

In some cases, one RStudio project/code depends on code from another RStudio project/code, so users are in the habit of making sure that all of their projects are stored in the same directory locally so that file paths like ../otherproject/code_that_gets_used_by_other_projects.R will work. My understanding is that users do not want to maintain the same code in separate repositories (totally fair, and advisable), but in some cases code that's being developed needs to be used in different projects and contexts.

There are a few potential solutions to that. The great r2dii package project is likely one solution. There's a possibility of using Git submodules. Unfortunately neither of those are quick or super easy to setup, so I think we just need to be aware of this and see if this problem dissolves with the r2dii packages.

[maurolepore]

See also https://github.com/2DegreesInvesting/ds-incubator/issues/20#issue-550889177