The goal of btts is to create a stronger link between the active user and the source files for a package. Too often I find myself searching through GitHub to find where I loaded a package from, or in which file a function is defined. Now, that information is just a click away.

GitHub has become the de-facto development repository for R packages, so it's essential that we are able to file issues, report bugs, suggest features, and generally interact with the source of a package. While other VCS platforms exist and are used, for now I am only supporting GitHub as I am most familiar with it. In theory this can be extended to BitBucket and others too.

devtools::install_github("jonocarroll/btts")

Note that this package is unable to self-document using this method as it would need to unload itself first.

It is advisable to install a package for the first time using devtools::install_github so that dependencies are properly met. The additional functionality can then be added by re-installing with btts::install_github.

The motivation for this package is similar to that of pryr::show_c_source which obtains the C code for an R .Primitive. Often we need to see the raw source of a function definition, so this package allows us to easily link back to the GitHub repo where it is hosted.

Starting with a fresh session (in RStudio, CTRL+F10 or CMD+F10),

btts::install_github("owner/package")

fetches an R package source from GitHub (exactly the same as devtools::install_github("owner/package") does) then injects some HTML into the Roxygen comments to add the help overlay. It then builds the package as normal.

If a package is available on CRAN but not on GitHub, then this menu can still be added by installing from the read-only CRAN mirror, e.g.

btts::install_github("cran/ggghost")

but the Issues link will be somewhat useless as this is not where issues are maintained.

Once installed and loaded the usual way (library(package)) the help pane in RStudio for that package's functions will now feature a pull-up tab at the bottom. In that tab are links to the repo itself, the issues page, and the source file for the function in question.

Noam Ross created htmlhelp which I adapted into this form. This would not have been possible without his first steps.