Hi Martin,

If you are interesting how R is looking for objects just see these links:

I think this one is the basic knowledge:

http://obeautifulcode.com/R/How-R-Searches-And-Finds-Stuff/

See also:

http://brokeringclosure.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/namespaces-and-name-conflicts/

http://digitheadslabnotebook.blogspot.com/2011/06/environments-in-r.html

And something about how to create R package you can find here:

http://joelgranados.wordpress.com/2012/07/31/creating-an-r-package/

Best Konrad

A few additions/comments on the answers you got already.

- a good source of information is looking at how other packages are made. r-forge and github host quite a lot of R package projects, and of course you can download the source code of all CRAN packages.

- package.skeleton ()

helps you setting up the correct directory and file structure of a package.

- I find package roxygen2 very useful for writing the documentation in a javadoc/oxygen like style. It also produces the NAMESPACE file.

- tools (base R) is a package with tools helping during package development, and there's also package devtools.

- AFAIK, the recommended use of R CMD build and R CMD check is to build the package first and then check that file (although usually R CMD check works fine with the uncompressed folders as well).

- r-forge automatically does nightly builds for linux/mac/win and lets you have the check results (there was a message that they cannot take new projects a while ago, but that seems to be solved now - at least I don't see that message any more)

- devtools helps if you use github as your public repository.

Best, Claudia

Hello Martin,

You may have already discovered this resource. If not, the CRAN r-project site has a document which describes how to make an R package.

http://cran.r-project.org/doc/contrib/Leisch-CreatingPackages.pdf