Smart people can be lousy programmers, and often are. Conversely, any feeling that one should be publishing software because it is the thing to do should be resisted strongly.

I imagine that most people first write something because they really want it for themselves. I don't program in R, but I program otherwise, and I see no R-specific issue here. So, what would you say should justify, and at which point, to start bringing together various functions and data in a new documented and broadly available package ?

I might have forgotten many points that could go in either list, and also, these criteria seem partly subjective.

number of new functions not sufficient to justify to create a new independent package.

part of the methods used already present in some other packages.

the need for exchanging with other researchers and allowing reproducibility of experiments Īnd amongst the points that could lead to a contrary decision :.

the non-existence of other packages in the same sub-field.

To be more specific, I would add that the question is not about the reasons to use R in itself, more about the decision to compile various scripts and to integrate them in a new package.Īmongst the points that could lead to these decisions, I have thought of (in a quite non-exhaustive fashion), of : I understand this question is quite a broad one, but I wonder what should be the decisive points in deciding to create (or not) a new package for R. It is not currently accepting new answers or interactions. This question and its answers are locked because the question is off-topic but has historical significance.

Build a package in r