# README
scribe
scribe
(acronym for s
ystem c
ompatibility r
eport for i
nstall & b
uild e
valuation) is a project that creates complete build, check and install reports for a collection of R projects that are defined in an renv.lock file.
Installing
Simply download the project for your distribution from the releases page. scribe
is distributed as a single binary file and does not require any additional system requirements other than git
and R
, both of which it integrates and interfaces with externally.
Usage
scribe
is a command line utility, so after installing the binary in your PATH
, simply run the following command to view its capabilities:
scribe --help
Example usage with multiple flags:
scribe --logLevel debug --maskedEnvVars 'password|key' --renvLockFilename renv2.lock --checkPackage 'tern*,teal*' --reportDir htmlreportdir --maxDownloadRoutines 100 --maxCheckRoutines 20 --numberOfWorkers 150 --clearCache
To download packages from git
repositories, scribe
retrieves PAT from environment variables:
- for GitLab, it reads the token from
GITLAB_TOKEN
variable, - for GitHub, it reads the token from
GITHUB_TOKEN
variable.
Configuration file
If you'd like to set the above options in a configuration file, by default scribe
checks ~/.scribe
, ~/.scribe.yaml
and ~/.scribe.yml
files.
If this file exists, scribe
uses options defined there, unless they are overridden by command line flags.
You can also specify custom path to configuration file with --config <your-configuration-file>.yml
command line flag.
When using custom configuration file, if you specify command line flags, the latter will still take precedence.
Example contents of configuration file:
logLevel: trace
checkPackage: teal*
maskedEnvVars: secret-variable-name
renvLockFilename: custom-renv.lock
checkAllPackages: true
outputReport: someDirectoryName
maxDownloadRoutines: 30
maxCheckRoutines: 31
numberOfWorkers: 32
clearCache: true
Binary dependencies
For scribe
to use binary packages, it expects the renv.lock
to contain the repository definitions pointing to the binary repositories.
Examples of expected format of binary repository URLs:
- Linux:
https://packagemanager.posit.co/cran/__linux__/<distribution-name>/latest
- Windows:
https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/<r-version>
https://www.bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/bin/windows/contrib/<r-version>
https://packagemanager.posit.co/cran/latest/bin/windows/contrib/<r-version>
- macOS:
https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/macosx/contrib/<r-version>
https://www.bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/bin/macosx/big-sur-arm64/contrib/<r-version>
https://www.bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/bin/macosx/big-sur-x86_64/contrib/<r-version>
https://packagemanager.posit.co/cran/latest/bin/macosx/big-sur-x86_64/contrib/<r-version>
https://packagemanager.posit.co/cran/latest/bin/macosx/big-sur-arm64/contrib/<r-version>
where <r-version>
is e.g. 4.2
, 4.3
etc.
In all cases the URL points to a directory where the PACKAGES
file is located.
Additionally, on Windows it might be required to point scribe
to a local R installation, for example by using flag: --rExecutablePath 'C:\Program Files\R\R-4.3.2\bin\R.exe'
.
Environment variables
Scribe reads environment variables with SCRIBE_
prefix and tries to match them with CLI flags.
For example, setting the following variables will override the respective values from configuration file:
SCRIBE_LOGLEVEL
, SCRIBE_CHECKPACKAGE
, SCRIBE_RENVLOCKFILENAME
, SCRIBE_CHECKALLPACKAGES
, SCRIBE_OUTPUTREPORT
etc.
The order of precedence is:
CLI flag → environment variable → configuration file → default value.
Cache
scribe
uses cache stored in /tmp/scribe
for various purposes.
The results of download, installation, build and check stages are stored in /tmp/scribe/cache
. When scribe
detects presence of files with such results, it skips respective stages.
In order to run the download, installation, build and check from scratch, the /tmp/scribe/cache
directory should be removed manually. Removing whole /tmp/scribe
directory is also possible - in that case, the packages will have to be downloaded again because cached tar.gz
packages and git
repositories are stored in this directory.
Development
This project is built with the Go programming language.
Development Environment
It is recommended to use Go 1.20+ for developing this project. This project uses a pre-commit configuration and it is recommended to install and use pre-commit when you are developing this project.
Common Commands
Run make help
to list all related targets that will aid local development.
Style
This project adopts the Uber styleguide.
License
scribe
is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. See LICENSE.md for details.