Skip ggplot2 dependency

[gaborcsardi]

This is just something to think about. I think it might be worth separating plotting related functions to another package. ggplot2 has a lot of dependencies, which also makes installing git2r a "heavy" operation.

R packages tend to be heavy, and include a lot of loosely related functionality. I think this is a bad thing for maintenance, and it is better to have lighter packages.

[karthik]

Agreed. Perhaps we could move it to suggests?

[gaborcsardi]

Suggests is specifically for packages that you need to R CMD check and/or for running the examples and the vignettes, so personally I would not even include it there.

[karthik]

Good point. So do away with the S3 methods we have altogether? I find commits by week/month really useful. It would be nice to have it as an add on feature that doesn't burden the main package with too many dependencies.

[gaborcsardi]

You have a better understanding of the package, I am not sure what belongs to the plotting functionality. A just looked quickly, and it seemed that the stuff in plot.r could go to another package, and then you do not need the ggplot2 dependency.

But I understand that there might be other opinions about this, and I don't think leaving it as it is is a bad decision.

[krlmlr]

How about Enhances: ggplot2? Not strictly correct, but probably the closest match to Debian's "Recommended:".

[gaborcsardi]

Well, I think Enhances is also misleading. What we would need is something like Debian's Suggests (or, as you say, Recommends), but R's Suggests means something else....

[krlmlr]

For Debian, I keep mixing up "Suggests" and "Recommends", too.

From the docs:

Finally, the ‘Enhances’ field lists packages “enhanced” by the package at hand, e.g., by providing methods for classes from these packages, or ways to handle objects from these packages ...

I think that's pretty much what autoplot does...

[gaborcsardi]

Exactly. It seems good for autoplot, but I would not say that git2r enhances or even Enhances ggplot2. It just uses ggplot2 for plotting, really. So the Imports is fine, and the other option would be to put it in another package.

[stewid]

@gaborcsardi I think it's a very good suggestion to drop the ggplot2 dependency to facilitate maintenance and focus on the core functionality. I second the idea of creating another package for visualization of a git repository. I'll add an issue to drop ggplot2.

[karthik]

What should we call this helper package? git2rextras?

[gaborcsardi]

I would be more specific and call it or something that refers to visualization or plotting, like gitviz (not a very good name, though).

To me git2extras a bit sounds like a package that contains a lot of random git related stuff. (I am not saying that it would necessarily.)

[karthik]

Having something like git2rextras allows us to move all non-essential functionality into that package. Right now it's only the viz routines but if there are other enhancements, it protects core users from extraneous stuff but allows others to benefit by installing this one.

[stewid]

No need to add another issue, since this is the issue...

I think git2rextras is to long

[karthik]

That was just a suggestion. I am not pushing for it.

[gaborcsardi]

@karthik: still, I think being more specific is better, git2extras is too loose for me.

If it turns out that you want to build a database engine on top of git, that would go in a gitdb package, not into gitextras.

[stewid]

How about combining git and graphics - gig

[karthik]

agreed

[karthik]

fine by me. Shall I start a new repo and start moving stuff over?

[gaborcsardi]

I think gig is a good name, although it is hard to guess that it is related to git. Hot about ggit?

[karthik]

:+1: for ggit

[stewid]

:+1: for ggit

@karthik please start a new repo and drop ggplot2 from git2r

[stewid]

Btw @gaborcsardi I'm working on a database engine on top of git2r using the Xapian search engine https://github.com/stewid/gix

[gaborcsardi]

@stewid Cool.

[karthik]

@stewid Done https://github.com/ropensci/ggit I'll start moving the ggplot stuff out of git2r.

[stewid]

@karthik I have moved the plot code from git2r to ggit. We need to add a couple of files to ggit to make it a working package.

[stewid]

Have implemented the plot method with base plot.

repo <- repository("git2r")
plot(repo)