Package development process: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 22:50, 8 September 2010

Revision as of 22:57, 8 September 2010

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In this context, a ''package'' is a collection of functions written for use in a single language such as [[Python (programming language)|Python]] or [[R (programming language)|R]], bundled with documentation. For many programming languages, there are [[Software repository|software repositories]] where people share such packages.

AFor example, a [[Python (programming language)|Python]] package combines documentation, code and initial set up and possibly examples that could be used as [[unit testing|unit tests]] in a single file with a "py" extension.

By contrast, an [[R (programming language)|R]] package has documentation with examples in files separate from the code, possibly bundled with other material such as sample data sets and introductory ''vignettes''. The source code for an R package is contained in a directory with a "DESCRIPTION" file and subdirectories "man" containing documentation files, "R", with files of code, and perhaps others. <ref> {{cite book|title=Writing R Extensions |authorlink=<!-- R Development Core Team --> |url =http://cran.r-project.org/ | }} </ref>