pkgdown development mode

[Bisaloo]

pkgdown offers 4 development modes:

• auto
• release
• devel
• unreleased

At the moment, Epiverse-TRACE packages use either auto, or release (the default).

At the last development meeting, we discussed how auto could confuse users by providing two versions of the same site, possibly with conflicting information, or with information that doesn't match their installed version. This lead us to call for a poll here to try and harmonize the use of these development mode across the project.

Here are the potential options we identified:

• keep auto but add visual elements (different colours, banner, etc.) to really insist on the difference between the release site and the development site
• use dev and always only offer the development site, with a prompt for users to update to the latest version if they detect mismatch with their existing version. Vignettes and documentation for their current version is still available locally via help() and browseVignettes().
• use unreleased (only one website) until the package is on CRAN and then switch to auto (release + dev website). The rationale here is that we expect most users to install from CRAN and it would be good to direct them to the frozen release site, with an option to manually switch to the dev website if they installed from GitHub (which suggests they are probably more comfortable with R package lifecycle). This would also implement the first suggestion from this list.

[pratikunterwegs]

Thanks. I think option 3 reflects the most common user experience and would be the way to go. It would probably also help users to have a dev site URL in the Readme for sites using auto, similar to dev version installation instructions.

[sbfnk]

I agree on option (3) as preferred. For the link in the README, here's an example https://github.com/epiforecasts/EpiNow2/blob/5c5a7266e0033445e5142e7a164ffd0df3b1cbeb/README.Rmd#L118

[joshwlambert]

I also prefer option 3.