Reproducible project-based workflows

Lecture 17

Dr. Benjamin Soltoff

Cornell University
INFO 5001 - Fall 2024

October 25, 2023

Announcements

Announcements

  • Revised project deadlines

  • Exam begins tomorrow at 8am

Organize your life

Be organized as you go, not “tomorrow”

Don’t fret over past mistakes.

Raise the bar for new work.

Be organized



self-explaining >>> wordy, needy explainers

Be organized

>>>

  file salad
  + an out of date README

Good enough practices in scientific computing

PLOS Computational Biology

Wilson, Bryan, Cranston, Kitzes, Nederbragt, Teal (2017)

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005510

http://bit.ly/good-enuff

Project-oriented workflows

Adopt a project-oriented workflow

Why

  • work on more than 1 thing at a time

  • collaborate, communicate, distribute

  • start and stop

How

  • dedicated directory

  • RStudio Project

  • Git repo, probably syncing to a remote

If the top of your script is

setwd("C:\Users\jenny\path\that\only\I\have")
rm(list = ls())


Jenny will come into your your office and SET YOUR COMPUTER ON FIRE 🔥.

Project-oriented workflow designs this away. 🙌

Which persist after rm(list = ls())?

Option Persists?
A. library(dplyr)
B. summary <- head
C. options(stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
D. Sys.setenv(LANGUAGE = "fr")
E. x <- 1:5
F. attach(iris)
01:00

What does it mean to be an RStudio Project?


RStudio leaves notes to itself in foo.Rproj


Open Project = dedicated instance of RStudio

  • dedicated R process

  • file browser pointed at Project directory

  • working directory set to Project directory

Many projects open

Use a “blank slate”


usethis::use_blank_slate()


OR


Tools -> Global Options

Restart R often


Session -> Restart R

Windows

  • Ctrl + Shift + F10

Mac

  • Cmd + Shift + 0

  • Cmd + Shift + F10

Project initiation: the local case

  1. New folder + make it an RStudio Project

  • usethis::create_project("~/i_am_new")

  • File -> New Project -> New Directory -> New Project

  1. Make existing folder into an RStudio Project

  • usethis::create_project("~/i_exist")

  • File -> New Project -> Existing Directory

Safe paths

On reproducibility of code


A large-scale study on research code quality and execution.
Trisovic, A., Lau, M.K., Pasquier, T. et al. 
Sci Data 9, 60 (2022).

https://twitter.com/kjhealy/status/1514169782060429320
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01143-6

Do you know where your files are?

Working directory vs. home directory

  • Working directory is associated with a specific process or running application
  • Home directory is a static, persistent thing

Working directory \(\neq\) home directory

Practice “safe paths”

Relative to a stable base, use file system functions

Packages with file system functions

install.packages("fs")

fs = file path handling

install.packages("here")

here = project-relative paths

Examples of a stable base

Project directory

here::here("data", "raw-data.csv")
here::here("data/raw-data.csv")

Automatically complete paths with Tab.

User’s home directory

file.path("~", ...)
fs::path_home(...)

Absolute paths

Don’t hard-wire them into your scripts.

Instead, form at runtime relative to a stable base

(BAD <- "/Users/soltoffbc/tmp/test.csv")
[1] "/Users/soltoffbc/tmp/test.csv"

(GOOD <- fs::path_home("tmp/test.csv"))
/Users/soltoffbc/tmp/test.csv

Practice safe paths

  • Use the here package to build paths inside a project.

  • Leave working directory at top-level at all times, during development.

  • Absolute paths are formed at runtime.

Artwork by @allison_horst.

here example

# form filepath
here::here("figs", "built-barchart.png")
# save to disk
ggsave(here::here("figs", "built-barchart.png"))

  • Works on my machine, works on yours!

  • Works even if working directory is in a sub-folder.

  • Works for RStudio Projects, Git repos, R packages, etc.

  • Works with knitr / Quarto.

here::here()

The here package is designed to work inside a project, where that could mean:

  • RStudio Project

  • Git repo

  • R package

  • Folder with a file named .here

here::here() does not create directories; that’s your job.

Kinds of paths

Absolute path.

dat <- read_csv("/Users/soltoffbc/Projects/info-5001/ae-15/data/installed-packages.csv")


Relative path to working directory, established by the RStudio Project.

dat <- read_csv("data/installed-packages.csv")


Relative path within the RStudio Project directory.

dat <- read_csv(here::here("data/installed-packages.csv"))

What if my data can’t live in my project directory?

  1. Are you sure it can’t?

  2. Review the Good Enough Practices paper for tips.

  3. Create a symbolic link to access the data. (fs::link_create(), fs::link_path())

  4. Put the data in an R package.

  5. Use pins.

  6. Explore other data warehousing options.

Project structure

Break logic and output into pieces

Process

https://r4ds.had.co.nz/introduction.html#what-you-will-learn

Project code

smell-test.R

wrangle.R

model.R

make-figs.R

report.Qmd

>>>

    everything.R

Process and code

Project artifacts

raw-data.xlsx

data.csv

fit.rds

ests.csv

>>>

.Rdata

Process and artifacts

A humane API for analysis

Application exercise

ae-15

  • Go to the course GitHub org and find your ae-15 (repo name will be suffixed with your GitHub name).
  • Clone the repo in RStudio Workbench, open the R scripts in the repo, and follow along and complete the exercises.
  • Render, commit, and push your edits by the AE deadline – end of tomorrow

Recap

  • Use project-based workflows to easily and reproducibly structure your work
  • Create usable, reproducible file paths using here
  • Split project workflow into separate files (scripts and/or Quarto documents) based on substantive tasks

Acknowledgments

Good luck on the exam!

🔗 info5001.infosci.cornell.edu