usethis: use_description – R documentation

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use_description

Create or modify a DESCRIPTION file

Description

use_description() creates a DESCRIPTION file. Although mostly associated with R packages, a DESCRIPTION file can also be used to declare dependencies for a non-package projects. Within such a project, devtools::install_deps() can then be used to install all the required packages. Note that, by default, use_decription() checks for a CRAN-compliant package name. You can turn this off with check_name = FALSE.

usethis consults the following sources, in this order, to set DESCRIPTION fields:

fields argument of create_package() or use_description()
getOption("usethis.description")
Defaults built into usethis

The fields discovered via options or the usethis package can be viewed with use_description_defaults().

If you create a lot of packages, consider storing personalized defaults as a named list in an option named "usethis.description". Here's an example of code to include in .Rprofile, which can be opened via edit_r_profile():

options(
  usethis.description = list(
    `Authors@R` = 'person("Jane", "Doe", email = "jane@example.com",
                          role = c("aut", "cre"),
                          comment = c(ORCID = "YOUR-ORCID-ID"))',
    License = "MIT + file LICENSE",
    Language =  "es"
  )
)

Prior to usethis v2.0.0, getOption("devtools.desc") was consulted for backwards compatibility, but now only the "usethis.description" option is supported.

Usage

use_description(fields = list(), check_name = TRUE, roxygen = TRUE)

use_description_defaults(package = NULL, roxygen = TRUE, fields = list())

Arguments

`fields`	A named list of fields to add to `DESCRIPTION`, potentially overriding default values. See `use_description()` for how you can set personalized defaults using package options
`check_name`	Whether to check if the name is valid for CRAN and throw an error if not
`roxygen`	If `TRUE`, sets `RoxygenNote` to current roxygen2 version
`package`	Package name

Examples

## Not run: 
use_description()

use_description(fields = list(Language = "es"))

use_description_defaults()

## End(Not run)

usethis

Automate Package and Project Setup

v2.0.1

MIT + file LICENSE

Authors

Hadley Wickham [aut] (<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4757-117X>), Jennifer Bryan [aut, cre] (<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6983-2759>), RStudio [cph, fnd]

Initial release