Deploy a pkgdown website for your R package

2021-03-19

When creating an R package pkgdown is a fantastic resource for creating a package website from your R function’s documentation and vignettes.

This workflow uses Google’s Secret Manager to securely hold your Git ssh login details, then use those details to commit a built website on each Git commit. This means you do not have to build the website locally.

Each commit you make, a background task will build the website with your changes and commit it back to the repo - see example for this website:

A suggested setup workflow to do this is below:

1. Go to GCP console > Cloud Build > Triggers and link your git repo to Cloud Build.
2. Create a git ssh key to make commits to your repo. GitHub has a guide here
3. Upload the ssh key secret to Google Cloud Secret Manager - you can use this secret for all future builds.
4. Use cr_deploy_pkgdown() to create a cloudbuild.yml file in your R package’s directory, giving it your secret name from step 2. create_trigger can be file if you want the cloudbuild.yaml to be within your directory, or inline if the build will only be defined in the trigger.

cr_deploy_pkgdown("MarkEdmondson1234/googleCloudRunner",
                  secret = "github-key",
                  create_trigger = "inline")

5. Commit to your git repository

The function will then create a build customised for creating and rendering pkgdown websites, and committing the rendered version to your GitHub /docs folder.

The below is an example for googleCloudRunner’s website:

You can customise the deployment further by using cr_buildstep_pkgdown() in your own custom build files. For instance, you could download other auth keys using cr_buildstep_secret() again, so that your website has working authenticated examples.