Improving the skills of R Package Maintainers with Support from the R Consortium
Originally published on Linkedin.
I'm thrilled to announce that I'm part of an experienced project team that was awarded a Special Project Grant from the R Consortium. I will be leading efforts on improving the skillset of R package maintainers through the development of new technical documentation.
An Opportunity for New R Developers
One of the main goals of this project is to educate a diverse group of budding R developers. We aim to equip them with the necessary technical knowledge and skills to help facilitate the continuous integration of high quality R packages into the R ecosystem. This initiative is all about fostering an inclusive environment where developers of all backgrounds can thrive and contribute to CRAN.
User-Friendly Documentation
As part of this project, we'll be developing a new documentation solution with a Quarto website. A key aspect of the project is to make it user-friendly for new R package maintainers to submit to CRAN. We will work to identify common CRAN submission issues and create a framework of "problems" and "solutions" that are easy to implement and discover in the form of a cookbook. This website will serve as a go-to resource for new R package maintainers to follow best practices when submitting to CRAN as a compliment to the existing documentation. This will expedite the time it takes for package maintainers to solve common problems, clearing the pathway for CRAN acceptance and reducing repeat problems.
Project Team & Timeline
The team consists of Beni Altmann (current part-time assistant on the CRAN Team) and myself as technical writers. We will be advised by a steering committee comprised of members from the R Foundation and experienced R users with R package development expertise: Heather Turner , Bettina Grün, and Gwynn Gebeyehu.
The project is estimated to be completed by end of year. Technical writing and research and development will take place over staggered periods, which will culminate in the development & hosting of training webinars on the new documentation for interested new and experienced package maintainers. There will also be opportunities to collect and incorporate feedback from the R community.
This project is a significant step forward for the R community, and I'm thrilled to be part of it! Thank you to the R Consortium for supporting this project.
Follow our development journey on GitHub: https://github.com/r-devel/cran-cookbook
