usethis, git, and GitHub

I have started getting into package development and finding the usethis package to be very useful. To smooth out some bumps with version control – really switching back and forth between console and terminal for git commits. Note: I don’t like to use the GUi’s Git tab – typing makes sure I really mean what I do.

The following is taken from the usethis documentation.

library(usethis)

a. Initiate use of git (local)

usethis::use_git()

b. Default editor

use_git_config(core.editor = "nano")

c. Build connection with GitHub. This includes contact info and a personal access token. Finally git_sitrep() provides a report of how things are set.

use_git_config(user.name = "First Last",
               user.email = "your.email@someplace.xyz")

create_github_token() ## will open up github to create a token

gitcreds::gitcreds_set() ## paste in the new token

git_sitrep()

With the steps above any R functions relying on git should work without an issue.

I did have one problem getting started where gitcreds::gitcreds_set() could not find git on my machine. To solve this I installed a updated version of git.