Create a new R project following the best practices

project_setup.R

#!/usr/bin/env Rscript
args = commandArgs(trailingOnly = TRUE)


# What is this: A script that assists in following best practices when starting a new project
# What are these best practices:
# - Creating a project is the first step, managing individual scripts is a mess
# - Always have a git setup at the root of the project
# - A README.md file for documentation
# - A .gitignore file for ignoring files and directories, remember .DS_Store


# What is a .Rproj file
# The file is created by Rstudio when starting new projects. The contents are as follows: 

proj_contents <- "Version: 1.0
RestoreWorkspace: Default
SaveWorkspace: Default
AlwaysSaveHistory: Default
EnableCodeIndexing: Yes
UseSpacesForTab: Yes
NumSpacesForTab: 2
Encoding: UTF-8
RnwWeave: Sweave 
LaTeX: pdfLaTeX"

gitignore_contents <- "# History files
.Rhistory
.Rapp.history

# Session Data files
.RData

# Example code in package build process
*-Ex.R

# Output files from R CMD build
/*.tar.gz

# Output files from R CMD check
/*.Rcheck/

# RStudio files
.Rproj.user/

# produced vignettes
vignettes/*.html
vignettes/*.pdf

# OAuth2 token, see https://github.com/hadley/httr/releases/tag/v0.3
.httr-oauth

# knitr and R markdown default cache directories
/*_cache/
/cache/

# Temporary files created by R markdown
*.utf8.md
*.knit.md

.DS_Store
"


project_setup <- function(project_root, project_name, open_flag=NULL){
  
  if(length(project_root) != 1 | length(project_name) != 1 | length(open_flag) != 1){
    stop("Please check your arguments")
  }
  
  # Where the project resides
  file_path <- paste0(project_root,'/',project_name)
  if(!dir.exists(file_path)){
    dir.create(file_path)
  } 
  project_file <- paste0(file_path,'/',project_name,'.Rproj')
  readme_file <- paste0(file_path,'/','README.md')
  gitignore_file <- paste0(file_path,'/','.gitignore')
  
  print( "=> Creating files ... ")
  # Creating files
  file.create(project_file)
  file.create(readme_file)
  file.create(gitignore_file)
  
  print( "=> Writing meta contents ... ")
  # Writing project contents
  con <- file(project_file,"w")
  writeLines(con = con,text = proj_contents)
  
  # Closing connection
  close(con)
  
  # Writing gitignore contents
  con <- file(gitignore_file,"w")
  writeLines(con = con,text = gitignore_contents, sep = "\n")
  
  # Closing connection
  close(con)
  
  print( "=> Creating a git connection ... ")
  # Creating a git connection at the root
  system(paste0("git init ", file_path))
  
  # If open_flag is set to TRUE, then open the project
  if(open_flag == 1) {
    print("=> Opening a project ... ")
    system(paste0("open -a RStudio ", project_file))
  }
}

project_setup(args[1], args[2], args[3])

• You can create an alias for the above script as alias analyse= "RScript <script_path> $1 $2 $3"
• Then just execute analyse project_root project_name 1 and let RStudio take over