Welcome to the 41th post in the
$R^4 series. Just
as the
previous
post illustrated
r2u use to empower
interactive
Google
Colab sessions, today we want to look at continuous integration via
GitHub Actions.
Actions are very powerful, yet also intimidating and complex. How
does one know what to run? How does ensure requirements are installed?
What does these other actions do?
Here we offer a
much simpler yet
fully automatic
solution. It takes advantage of the fact that
r2u integrates
fully and
automatically with the system, here
apt, without us having to worry about the setup. One way to
make this very easy is the use of the
Rocker containers for
r2u. They already include
the few lines of simple (and scriptable) setup, and have
bspm setup so that R
commands to install packages dispatch to
apt and will bring
all required dependencies automatically and easily.
With that the required yaml file for an action can be as simple as
this:
name: r2u
on:
push:
pull_request:
release:
jobs:
ci:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
container:
image: rocker/r2u:latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v3
- name: SessionInfo
run: R -q -e 'sessionInfo()'
#- name: System Dependencies
# # can be used to install e.g. cmake or other build dependencies
# run: apt update -qq && apt install --yes --no-install-recommends cmake git
- name: Package Dependencies
run: R -q -e 'remotes::install_deps(".", dependencies=TRUE)'
- name: Build Package
run: R CMD build --no-build-vignettes --no-manual .
- name: Check Package
run: R CMD check --no-vignettes --no-manual $(ls -1tr *.tar.gz tail -1)
There are only a few key components here.
First, we have the
on block where for simplicity we
select pushes, pull requests and releases. One could reduce this to just
pushes by removing or commenting out the next two lines. Many further
refinements are possible and documented but not reqired.
Second, the
jobs section and its sole field
ci saythat we are running this CI on Ubuntu in its latest
release. Importantly we then also select the
rocker container for
r2 meaning that we
explicitly select running in this container (which happens to be an
extension and refinement of
ubuntu-latest). The
latest tag points to the most recent LTS release, currently
jammy aka 22.04. This choice also means that our runs are
limited to Ubuntu and exclude macOS and Windows. That is a choice: not
every CI task needs to burn extra (and more expensive) cpu cycles on the
alternative OS, yet those can always be added via other yaml files
possibly conditioned on fewer runs (say: only pull requests) if
needed.
Third, we have the basic sequence of
steps. We check out
the repo this file is part of (very standard). After that we ask
R show the session info in case we need to troubleshoot.
(These two lines could be commented out.) Next we show a commented-out
segment we needed in another repo where we needed to add
cmake and
git as the package in question
required local compilation during build. Such a need is fairly rare, but
as shown can be be accomodated easily while taking advantage of the rich
development infrastructure provided by Ubuntu. But the step should be
optional for most R packages so it is commented out here. The next step
uses the
remotes package
to look at the DESCRIPTION file and install all dependencies which,
thanks to
r2u and
bspm, will use all Ubuntu
binaries making it both very fast, very easy, and generally failsafe.
Finally we do the two standard steps of
building the source
package and
checking it (while omitting vignettes and the (pdf)
manual as the container does not bother with a full texlive
installation this could be altered if desired in a derived
container).
And that s it! The startup cost is a few seconds to pull the
container, plus a few more seconds for dependencies and let us recall
that
e.g. the entire tidyverse installs all one hundred plus
packages in about twenty seconds as shown in earlier post. After that
the next cost is generally just what it takes to build and check your
package once all requirements are in.
To use such a file for continuous integration, we can install it in
the
.github/workflows/ directory of a repository. One
filename I have used is
.github/workflows/r2u.yaml making
it clear what this does and how.
More information about
r2u is at its site, and we
answered some question in issues, and at stackoverflow. More questions
are always welcome!
If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can now
sponsor me at
GitHub.
This post by Dirk
Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box
blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit
settings.
A few weeks ago, my friend and neighbor J r me (aka lavamind)
installed a weather station on his balcony and started collecting data from it.
It has been quite useful to measure the degrading air quality during the recent
forest fires plaguing northern Canada, but sadly, the hardware itself
isn't great.
Whereas some projects like airgradient offer open hardware devices running
free software, the station we got is from RevolvAir, some kind of local
air monitoring project that aims to be a one-stop solution for exterior air
monitoring.
Not only is their device pretty expensive1, but it also reboots
frequently by itself. Even worse, their online data map requires an
account to view the data and the interface is bad, unintuitive and only stores
data up to a month.
Having a good background in data visualisation and statistics thanks to my
master's degree in economics, I decided I could do better. Two days later, I
had built a series of tools to collect, analyse and graph the JSON time series
data provided by the device.
The result is a very simple website that works without any JavaScript,
leveraging static graphs built using R. Modern web libraries and projects
offer an incredible wealth of tools to graph and visualise data, but as for
most of my web projects, I wanted something static and simple.
The source code for the project can be found here, and although it is
somewhat specific to the data structure provided by the RevolvAir device, it
could easily be adapted to other devices, as they tend to have very similar
JSON dumps.
Mais uma edi o da 
A long time ago, around the turn of the century, I was looking at some Useful Origami website and found a pattern for a document folder with a lot of pockets.
And by a lot of pockets I really mean a lot! I immediately had to fold one, and then another one, and then a few others, both in a size suitable for business cards and as a folder for A4 sheets of paper.
And then, a few years ago I needed a new document folder, and looked for these instructions, and couldn t find them anywhere. Luckily I still had some of the folders I had made, and the model was simple enough that I could unfold those and reconstruct the instructions.
I tried to show them around to see if anybody knew where it came from, but had no results.
Now that I ve prepared a new website for patterns for non-fiber crafts (and that I needed a new folder :D ) I ve decided to post 
. Internet shutdowns impact women 
Since the goal for the trailer was to haul encumbering and heavy loads, I
decided to splurge and got a 
So far, I've used the trailer to go grocery shopping, buy bulk food and haul
dirt and mulch. To make things easier, I've purchased two 
Although my housing cooperative has a (small) indoor bicycle parking space, my
partner uses our spot during the summer, which means I have to store the
trailer on my balcony. To make things more manageable and free up some space, I
set up a system of pulleys to hoist the trailer up the air when it's not in
use.
I did go through a few iterations, but I'm pretty happy with the current 8
pulleys block and tackle mechanism I rigged.
All and all, this trailer wasn't cheap, but I regret nothing. Knowing Surley's
reputation, it will last me many years and not having to drive a car to get
around always ends up being the cheaper solution.
Uhm, salsa is not resolving:
Since some time I ve been thinking about making myself a top or a dress with a wide gathered neckline that can be work at different widths, including off-the-shoulders.
A few years ago I ve been gifted a cut of nice, thin white fabric with a print of lines and lozenges that isn t uniform along the fabric, but looks like it was designed for some specific garment, and it was waiting in my stash for a suitable pattern.
And a few days ago, during a Sunday lunch, there was an off-hand mention of a dress from the late 1970s which had an elastic in the neckline, so that it could be optionally worn off-the-shoulders.
And something snapped in place.
I had plans for that afternoon, but they were scrapped, and I started to draw, measure, cut rectangles of fabric, pin and measure again, cut more fabric.
The part of the fabric with large vertical stripes had two different widths: I could have made the back narrower, but I decided to just keep a strip with narrower lines to one side.
The fabric also didn t have a full second strip of lozenges, so I had to hem it halfway through it.
The casing for the elastic was pieced from various scraps, but at least I was able to match the lines on the center front and back, even if they are different. Not that it matters a lot, since it s all hidden in the gathering, but I would have known.
And since I was working on something definitely modern, even if made out of squares and rectangles, of course I decided to hand-sew everything, mostly to be able to use quite small sewing allowances, since the fabric was pretty thin.
In my stash I had a piece of swimsuit elastic that feels nice, looks nice and makes a knot that doesn t slip, so I used it. It s a perfect match, except for the neon yellow colour, which I do like, but maybe is a bit too high visibility? I will see if the haberdasher has the same elastic in dark blue, but right now this will do.
It was a quick project anyway: by the end of the working week the top was finished; I think that on a sewing machine it would be easy to make it in a day.
And it can be worn off the shoulders! Which is something I will probably never do in public (and definitely not outdoors), but now if I wanted I could! :D
As usual, the pattern (for what pattern there is) and instructions are 
KDE Akademy 2023
KDE Konsole snap
After many years of effort, I am happy to announce that 
The DebConf video team has been
