GitHub package versioning

[cristinamullin]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Users would like to be able to check what version of the R package they are using, and if they already have the most recent version installed.

Describe the solution you'd like

Add the version to the start up message when the package loads via library(TADA). See example code below.

See: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/67986577/how-to-create-custom-start-up-messages-for-r-packages

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2192360/library-package-development-message-when-loading

.onAttach <- function(libname, pkgname) {
  packageStartupMessage("This is version ", packageVersion(pkgname), 
                        " of ", pkgname)
}

Then, use “packageVersion” to get current version and “available.packages” to get CRAN version.

Probably need to use tryCatch to avoid timeout issues (or when user does not have internet).

get_cran_version <- function(package_name) {
  cran_version <- tryCatch(available.packages()[package_name, "Version"], error = function(x) NULL)
  return(cran_version)
}

> get_cran_version("baytrends")
[1] "2.0.11"

Here is what ggplot2 has at startup:

https://github.com/tidyverse/ggplot2/blob/main/R/zzz.R

That all assumes CRAN. If working only on GitHub for the package it is more complicated.

Example code below

> library(httr)
> library(jsonlite)
> 
> # Replace 'username' and 'repo' with the GitHub username and repository name
> github_url <- [https://api.github.com/repos/USEPA/TADA/releases/latest](https://gcc02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.github.com%2Frepos%2FUSEPA%2FTADA%2Freleases%2Flatest&data=05%7C02%7CMullin.Cristina%40epa.gov%7C137e90358cd24781390308dc42b8b781%7C88b378b367484867acf976aacbeca6a7%7C0%7C0%7C638458608333286471%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Zj61D%2B6wXkFMoOMe1muQ2ajYMKcDaBnTa%2F73axjfLDM%3D&reserved=0)
> 
> response <- GET(github_url)
> if (http_status(response)$category == "Success") {
+     latest_release <- content(response)
+     latest_version <- latest_release$tag_name
+     print(paste("Latest version:", latest_version))
+ } else {
+     print("Failed to retrieve latest release information.")
+ }
[1] "Failed to retrieve latest release information."

The kicker here is you have to use “releases” on GitHub. If you do it works.

Here is a package I did for MD DNR.
https://github.com/leppott/MBSStools/releases
And it matches.

> # Replace 'username' and 'repo' with the GitHub username and repository name
> github_url <- [https://api.github.com/repos/leppott/MBSStools/releases/latest](https://gcc02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.github.com%2Frepos%2Fleppott%2FMBSStools%2Freleases%2Flatest&data=05%7C02%7CMullin.Cristina%40epa.gov%7C137e90358cd24781390308dc42b8b781%7C88b378b367484867acf976aacbeca6a7%7C0%7C0%7C638458608333303187%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=G2W2Fk2tASTPs0S6UFcUFUF6fmUCez0CVFyUzby3%2FH8%3D&reserved=0)
> 
> response <- GET(github_url)
> if (http_status(response)$category == "Success") {
+     latest_release <- content(response)
+     latest_version <- latest_release$tag_name
+     print(paste("Latest version:", latest_version))
+ } else {
+     print("Failed to retrieve latest release information.")
+ }
[1] "Latest version: v1.1"

There might be other ways.

Hope this helps,
Erik