Document/Scripts management for R code

Question

Hi useRs, I am looking for a solution that allows me to keep a track of a multitude of R scripts that I create for various projects and purposes. Some scripts are easily tracked to specific projects, whereas others are "convenience" functions created to serve a set of tasks.

Is there a way I can create a central DB and query it to find which scripts match most appropriately? I could create a system using a DBMS manually, but are users aware of anything in general or specific to R, that comes in the form of a software tool (maybe FOSS) ?

EDIT: Thank you for the responses. My current system is just a set of scripts with comments that allow me to identify their intended task. Though I use StatET with SVN, I would like a search utility along the lines of the "sos" package.

Answer 1

You'd probably be best working with a version control system. Many can be indexed and be made search-able. At my work, a stack of R, Eclipse, StatET, Subversion and Subclipse works very well for us.

Answer 2

R comes with several mechanisms for searching for help, most of which naturally use CRAN. Some examples: the sos package, cranberries, crantastic, and rseek. In many cases, these could be adapted to use a local repository (you can find out how to create a local repository in the R manual, which is very easy to do). Otherwise, if you package your scripts and submit them to CRAN, you will naturally have these available to you. I would also highly recommend this presentation on the subject: Creating R Packages, Using CRAN, R-Forge, And Local R Archive Networks And Subversion (SVN) Repositories from Spencer Graves and Sundar Dorai-Raj.

These would require you to put your code in packages, and create documentation, all of which is worth doing anyway. The package documentation turns out to be very useful for both documenting what things do, and helping your find them in the future. You can use roxygen to create this documentation in-line with your code. Also read this related question: Organizing R Source Code.

Alternatively, the help.search() function can be very useful for searching local packages, regardless of whether you have a repository set up.

Answer 3

The question

I am looking for a solution that allows me to keep a track of a multitude of R scripts that I create for various projects and purposes. Some scripts are easily tracked to specific projects, whereas others are "convenience" functions created to serve a set of tasks.

fails to address the obvious follow-up of why the existing mechanism is not suitable:

1. Create a local package for each project
2. Create one or more local packages for local utility functions
3. Use R's already existing mechanisms for searching, indexing, testing, cross-referencing
4. And use any revision control system of your liking, local or on the web, to host the code for 1. to 3. above.

Reinventing an RDBMS schema for 1. to 3. is just wrong in my book. But if you must, go ahead and replicate what you can already (mostly) get for free in tested and widely used code.