If you barrel ahead and install your peer’s gameday package for review, it will likely overwrite the installation of your own gameday package. Note: only your installed package is at risk. The source of your gameday package lives on safely on your computer and on GitHub. And you could re-install from either source.

If you want to be more careful, here are two approaches to take more control of the situation.

Option A. Install peer’s work to different library

In this option we install the peer’s version of gameday to a non-default library, leaving the installation of our own version intact.

First, restart your R session. Specifically, we don’t want your gameday package to be loaded before we start this. To confirm this is true, enter search() and make sure you don’t see gameday listed in the result.

Step 1. Create a temporary library

This is nothing more than creating a new directory on your computer. It’s where you’ll install and load your peer’s package from. Then we’ll delete it. I’m putting in my all purpose temp directory, but you can pick another location.

    tmp_lib <- "~/tmp/tmp_lib"
    dir.create(tmp_lib)

Navigate to this directory in some file browser and confirm the directory exists.

Step 2. Install gameday from your peer

Install your peer’s gameday package from GitHub into your temporary library. Below, devtools::with_lib() prepends your usual list of libraries with tmp_lib. Load your peer’s package from there and confirm you’re using the right version via maintainer().

    library(devtools)
    with_lib(tmp_lib, install_github("rebjoh/gameday"))
    library(gameday, lib.loc = tmp_lib)
    maintainer("gameday")

Use the peer’s package and submit your review.

Step 3. Remove peer’s work after peer-review

Delete your temporary library any way you want. Restart your R session to clean out your loaded packages and rest assured that plain ol’ library(gameday) will now load your version. Use maintainer() to check if you are worried. Here’s an R command to get rid of the temporary library.

    unlink(tmp_lib, recursive = TRUE)

Option B. Overwrite and re-install

In this option we temporarily overwrite our installed version of gameday with the version of our peer. This means that during the peer review we will not be able to load and run our version of gameday.

Step 1. Backup

Let’s make extra sure your gameday source package is safely stored locally and on GitHub.

  • Is your package in working order, with everything saved and committed and pushed to GitHub? Do it now!
  • Launch RStudio in the Project corresponding to your gameday package.

  • De-install gameday and confirm it’s truly gone from your library:

    remove.packages("gameday")
## Restart R session
library("gameday")
## Error in library("gameday") : there is no package called ‘gameday’
  • Re-install gameday and confirm it’s back in your library. Use RStudio’s “Build & Reload” then call gday(), get help ?gameday, browse the vignette, etc.
  • De-install gameday again (see above).

  • Re-install gameday from GitHub this time.

    library(devtools)
install_github("YOURGITHUBUSERNAME/gameday")
library("gameday")

    Revisit spot checks from above that gameday is back and in working order.

If everything works as expected, you can feel good that your package source is safely stored locally and on GitHub.

Step 2. Install gameday from your peer

Now that you know that you can re-install your version of gameday, it’s time to let your peer’s version of gameday take over.

  • Install your peer’s gameday, load it, check maintainer:

    devtools::install_github(YOURPEER/gameday)
library(gameday)
maintainer("gameday")
## USE IT

  • Review peer’s version of gameday.

Step 3. Re-install your version

Once you are done with the peer review, restore your own version of gameday.

  • To install from your local source, launch RStudio in your gameday Project and do “Build and Reload”.

  • Or install from GitHub

    devtools::install_github("YOURGITHUBUSERNAME/gameday")

  • Either way, verify your version is now installed:

    maintainer("gameday")
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