Automating version increase of R packages

Question

Problem

I am developing an R package and I want to increase the version automatically each time I build it. I want that to be able to associate my results to package versions. For now I was using my own ugly function to do that.

My question is: is there a way to do it better? Or, should I avoid doing that in general?

Another option

Another option I was thinking of is to install my package (hosted in github) using ´devtools::install_github´ and then save with my results (or adding to plots) the GithubSHA1 that is saved in the installed DESCRIPTION file.

For example I can get the version and GithubSHA1 like that for the ´devtools´ package:

read.dcf(file=system.file("DESCRIPTION", package="devtools"), 
         fields=c("Version", "GithubSHA1"))
 ##      Version    GithubSHA1                                
 ## [1,] "1.5.0.99" "3ae58a2a2232240e67b898f875b8da5e57d1b3a8"

My tries so far

I wrote the following function to produce a new DESCRIPTION file, with updated version and date. (Increasing the major version is something I don't mind increasing per hand)

incVer <- function(pkg, folder=".", increase="patch"){
    ## Read DESCRIPTION from installed package ´pkg´ and make new one on the specified
    ## ´folder´. Two options for ´increase´ are "patch" and "minor"
    f <- read.dcf(file=system.file("DESCRIPTION", package=pkg),
                  fields=c("Package", "Type", "Title", "Version", "Date", 
                           "Author", "Maintainer", "Description", "License", 
                           "Depends", "Imports", "Suggests"))
    curVer <- package_version(f[4])
    if(increase == "patch") {
        curVer[[1,3]] <- ifelse(is.na(curVer$patchlevel), 1, curVer$patchlevel + 1)

    } else if (increase == "minor") {
        curVer[[1,2]] <- ifelse(is.na(curVer$minor), 1, curVer$minor + 1)
        curVer[[1,3]] <- 0
    } else {
        stop(paste("Can not identify the increase argument: " , increase))
    }

    f[4] <- toString(curVer)
    ## Update also the date
    f[5] <- format (Sys.time(), "%Y-%m-%d")
    write.dcf(f, file=paste(folder, "DESCRIPTION", sep="/"))
}

Answer 1

If you are using git, then you can use git tags to create a version string. This is how we generate the version string of our igraph library:

git describe HEAD --tags | rev | sed 's/g-/./' | sed 's/-/+/' | rev

It gives you a format like this:

0.8.0-pre+131.ca78343

0.8.0-pre is the last tag on the current branch. (The last released version was 0.7.1, and we create a -pre tag immediately after the release tag.) 131 is the number of commits since the last tag. ca78343 is the first seven character of the hex id of the last commit.

This would be great, except that you cannot have version strings like this in R packages, R does not allow it. So for R we transform this version string using the following script: https://github.com/igraph/igraph/blob/develop/interfaces/R/tools/convertversion.sh

Essentially it creates a version number that is larger than the last released version and smaller than the next versions (the one in the -pre tag). From 0.8.0-pre+131.ca78343 it creates

0.7.999-131

where 131 is the number of commits since the last release.

I put the generation of the DESCRIPTION file in a Makefile. This replaces the date, and the version number:

VERSION=$(shell ./tools/convertversion.sh)

igraph/DESCRIPTION: src/DESCRIPTION version_number
        sed 's/^Version: .*$$/Version: '$(VERSION)'/' $<     | \
        sed 's/^Date: .*$$/Date: '`date "+%Y-%m-%d"`'/' > $@

This is quite convenient, you don't need to do anything, except for adding the release tags and the -pre tags.

Btw. this was mostly worked out by my friend and igraph co-developer, Tamás Nepusz, so the credit is his.

Answer 2

For a simpler approach, consider using the crant tool with the -u switch. For instance,

crant -u 3

will increment the third component of the version by one. There is also Git and SVN integration, and a bunch of other useful switches for roxygenizing, building, checking etc..