Setting up your computer for WORCS
This is a tutorial on how to set up your personal computer for use
with the worcs
package. It guides you through the
installation of several software packages, and registration on GitHub.
This vignette does not assume a prior installation of R
, so
it is suitable for novice users. You only have to perform these steps
once for every computer you intend to use R
and
worcs
on, and the entire process should take approximately
30 minutes if you start from scratch. In case some of the software is
already installed on your system, you can skip those related steps.
Follow these steps in order:
- Install R (free)
- Install ‘RStudio’ Desktop
(Free)
- Install Git from git-scm.com. Use the default,
recommended settings. It is especially important to leave these settings
selected:
- Git from the command line and also from third party software
- Use the ‘OpenSSL’ library
- Checkout Windows-style, commit Unix-style line endings
- Enable Git Credential Manager
- If you run into any trouble, a more comprehensive tutorial on
installing Git is available at happygitwithr.com.
- Register on ‘GitHub’ (alternatively: see this
vignette on how to use ‘GitLab’ or ‘Bitbucket’)
- Go to github.com and click
Sign up. Choose an “Individual”, “Free” plan.
- Install all packages required for WORCS by running the code block
below this writing in the ‘RStudio’ console. Be prepared for three
contingencies:
- If you receive any error saying There is no package called
[package name], then run the code
install.packages("package name")
- If you are prompted to update packages, just press [ENTER] to avoid
updating packages. Updating packages this way in an interactive session
sometimes leads to errors if the packages are loaded.
- If you see a pop-up dialog asking Do you want to install from
sources the package which needs compilation?, click
No.
install.packages("worcs", dependencies = TRUE)
tinytex::install_tinytex()
renv::consent(provided = TRUE)
- Connect ‘RStudio’ to Git and GitHub (for more support, see Happy Git with R
- Open ‘RStudio’, open the Tools menu, click Global Options,
and click Git/SVN
- Verify that Enable version control interface for RStudio
projects is selected
- Verify that Git executable: shows the location of git.exe.
If it is missing, manually fix the location of the file.
- Restart your computer
- Run
usethis::create_github_token()
. This should open a
webpage with a dialog that allows you to create a Personal Access Token
(PAT) to authorize your computer to exchange information with your
GitHub account. The default settings are fine; just click “Generate
Token” (bottom of the page).
- Copy the generated PAT to your clipboard (NOTE: You will not be able
to view it again!)
- Run
gitcreds::gitcreds_set()
. This should open a dialog
in the R console that allows you to paste the PAT from your
clipboard.
- If you do not have a Git user set up on your computer yet (e.g., if
this is the first time you will be using Git), run the following -
making sure to substitute your actual username and email:
worcs::git_user("your_name", "your_email", overwrite = TRUE)
- Everything should be installed and connected now. You can verify
your installation using an automated test suite. The results will be
printed to the console; if any tests fail, you will see a hint for how
to resolve it. Run the code below this writing in the ‘RStudio’
console:
worcs::check_worcs_installation()
Optional step
If you intend to write documents in APA style, you should
additionally install the papaja
package. Because
papaja
has many dependencies, it is recommended to skip
this step if you intend to write documents in a different style than
APA. Unfortunately, this package is not yet available on the central R
repository CRAN, but you can install it from ‘GitHub’ using the
following code:
install.packages("papaja", dependencies = TRUE, update = "never")