You can configure lintr to run as part of continuous
integration (either for a package or a general project containing R
files) in order to automatically check that commits and pull requests do
not deteriorate code style.
First, take special note of the proviso in
?executing_linters about the need to have your package and
its dependencies installed or loaded (e.g. with
pkgload::load_all()) in order for certain linters
(e.g. object_usage_linter()) to function as intended.
If your package is on GitHub, the easiest way to do this is with
GitHub Actions. The workflow configuration files use YAML syntax. The
usethis package has some great functionality that can help
you with workflow files. The most straightforward way to add a
lintr workflow to your package is to use the r-lib/actions’s lint
example. To do this with usethis, you need to call
This will create a workflow file called lint.yaml and
place it in the correct location, namely in the
.github/workflows directory of your repository. This file
configures all the steps required to run
lintr::lint_package() on your package.
Alternatively you can use the eponymous lint-changed-files.yaml
to only lint any changed files:
Comments to the commit or pull request will be printed as annotations
along side the status check on GitHub. If you want the builds to produce
an error instead of just a warning, you can set the environment variable
LINTR_ERROR_ON_LINT=true. This is set by default for both
r-lib/actions’s
lint.yaml and lint-changed-files.yaml. Note
that this will kill the R process in case of a lint.
If your project is in a subdirectory and you would like to use GitHub
Actions annotations, you can set
options(lintr.github_annotation_project_dir = "path/to/project")
which will make sure that the annotations point to the correct
paths.
You are not limited to using lintr for packages – you
can use it in combination with continuous integration for any other
project.
If your project is on GitHub, you could take advantage of GitHub
Actions and the usethis functionality. r-lib/actions includes a lint-project
example, which you can use by calling:
lintr powers R lints for Super-Linter and MegaLinter, which provide a
unified linting experience across many languages. Specifically, they
execute lintr::lint() on the R and R Markdown files
included in a given project.