Build and publish an R app container

This project is experimental!

Package up an R script into a Docker container and publish it in the GitHub Container Registry.

Usage

Example workflow:

name: docker-build.yaml
on:
  push:
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  docker-build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - name: Checkout
      uses: actions/checkout@v4
    - name: Build and push app
      uses: gaborcsardi/build-r-app@main
      with:
        codecov-token: ${{ secrets.CODECOV_TOKEN }}
        ghcr-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Inputs

• codecov-token: deployment token for https://codecov.io.
• ghcr-token: token to push to the GitHub Container Registry (GHCR).
• push: whether to push the built image, defaults to true.

R project setup

Dependencies

Declare dependencies in a DESCRIPTION file. Also add the Package and Version fields. Example:

Package: projectname
Version: 1.0.0
Imports:
    cli,
    dplyr
Suggests:
    covr,
    testthat

Use Imports: for the packages that you use in your app. Use Suggests: for packages that you use in your tests.

Tests

You can add testthat tests into the tests directory. If you add tests, then add the testthat and covr packages as dependencies under Suggests in DESCRIPTION.

If you have a tests directory, every build runs the tests and also test coverage with covr, automatically. If the tests fail, the build fails and no image will be deployed.

Test coverage

If you have tests, then every build automatically runs the test coverage using the covr package.

Example project

See https://github.com/r-hub/cran-metadata for a fully functional example project.

Related

• run-r-app action to the container on GitHub Actions

License

MIT (c) Posit Software, PBC, 2024