The bookdown package can be used to build gitbook books from multiple R markdown documents. The process for doing so is well-documented for a single user with a directory of R markdown documents.
A more complicated use case includes some additional requirements.
- The materials and R packages required to successfully run the materials in the book should be installable, including dependencies.
- Book chapters will be authored by individual contributors and each should be able to control when new content is merged into the book while still being able to work independently on their own materials.
- Contributions from each user should themselves be versioned, coupled to a particular version of the book, and potentially decoupled from the book to include or exclude content.
- Individual chapters and (and should) be incorporated into individual installable R packages so that R dependencies, code, and extended documentation can be included.
- The bookdown “parent” repository will depend on the packages from individual contributors. Installing the “parent” repository will lead to versioned installations of each “chapter” repository.
High-level implementation
- Parent package
- DESCRIPTION file
- contains Depends for each chapter package
- contains Remotes for each chapter package, ideally tied to individual tag, branch, or commit.
- _bookdown.yml
- contains
rmd_files tag that lists .Rmd file locations–these vignettes will be located in git submodules as described next
-
workshops directory