Final Tips & Resources

🎉 You’ve created, documented, built, and installed your first R package!

Whether you’re building internal tools, publishing reusable code, or documenting datasets for analysis, you now have a powerful foundation.

Here are some ideas for continuing your package development journey:

Add Tests

Use {testthat} to write tests for your functions:

usethis::use_testthat()
usethis::use_test("add_numbers")

Tests help you:

  • Catch bugs early
  • Document edge cases
  • Build confidence before sharing

Add Continuous Integration

Automate package checks and tests on GitHub with GitHub Actions:

usethis::use_github_action_check_standard()

This gives you automatic feedback every time you push a commit.

Share Your Work

  • Create a GitHub repo with usethis::use_github()
  • Add a README.Rmd
  • Include example usage and badges
  • Tag releases with version numbers

If it’s useful to others, make it public!

Submit to CRAN (Optional!)

If you want to publish on CRAN:

Not required — many useful packages live on GitHub forever.

Community

Ask questions, share your packages, and keep learning!

Thank You!

You’re now equipped to:

✅ Build packages
✅ Write reusable functions
✅ Share datasets
✅ Document everything

Keep your functions in packages. Future you will thank you.

Happy building! 🧱