Error when trying to install package from GitHub

Question

I am trying to install a package from my own repository in order to test if the functions work. The link to the repository is here: https://github.com/hharder74/SampleMeansII . When I try to install it using the following code:

devtools::install_github("hharder74/SampleMeansII")

I get the following error:

Error: Failed to install 'unknown package' from GitHub: HTTP error 404. Not Found Did you spell the repo owner (`hharder74`) and repo name (`SampleMeansII`) correctly? - If spelling is correct, check that you have the required permissions to access the repo.

I am really confused on where this error is coming from. This is my first time trying to upload a package to GitHub, and I just wanted to check if the package can be installed before I turned it in to my teacher. Here is a bit of code to test the functions if anyone needs it:

vec <- runif(100)

sample_mean(vec, 50)
many_sample_means(vec, reps = 10, n = 50)
sample_means_ns(vec, reps = 10, ns = c(5, 50, 500))

Answer 1

You have not yet created a package. You've just created some files with R code in them. An R package has a very particular structure that includes things like a DESCRIPTION file and a NAMESPACE file. In theory you could create these yourself, but often it's easier to use things like devtools::create and roxygen to create them for you. Or if you are using RStudio, you can create a new R Package project with default versions of these files.

To add a DESCRIPTION File, try running

usethis::use_description()

That will fill in defaults you can change.

Then you will need to create a NAMESPACE file. If you just want to make all the functions you define inside your R files to be available outside the pacakge, you can just put

exportPattern("^[[:alpha:]]+")

in that file and that should work.

You might also consider following guides like thoses http://r-pkgs.had.co.nz/package.html or https://swcarpentry.github.io/r-novice-inflammation/08-making-packages-R/ for a better overview on creating a package.

Once your repo looks like a proper R package, then you can use devtools::install_github to install it.

Note that github can be useful for tracking changes to any types of files. You may perform an analysis in an R script that you would like to track changes for and save that on github but it may not make sense to turn that analysis script into a packages. You generally make packages when you want to reuse functions or data across different projects then those projects can install and load your package. So not all R code lives inside an R package, but devtools::install_github can only be used to install actual packages.