Episode 12: Using Version Control With R
Posted on Monday, Apr 1, 2013 | Category: Podcast
This is not an April Fool’s joke … The R-Podcast is back once again! In this episode, I discuss the concept of version control and how you can get started with using the Git VCS right now with your R projects. Also I discuss a big batch of listener feedback, and highlight a couple of great visualization applications from the community using ggplot2. All of that and more on episode 12 of the R-Podcast!
Show Notes
The basics for version control and Git
- Why it’s important: Backups and reproducibility
- Git is available for all major platforms, see GitHub page for installation instructions for all operating systems
- IDEs RStudio and Eclipse via Egit plugin offer integration of Git for easy usage
- Key commands:
git init,git add file.R,git commit -m "my commit message" - Tell Git what files you don’t want to be tracked with
.gitignorefile(s) - GitHub and BitBucket are two excellent remote repository host sites
- Wikipedia article on revision control
- Pro Git book, with electronic copy available for free!
- How do you combine revision control with workflow in R
- R and version control for the solo data analyst
- Jeremy Anglim’s tutorial on Using Git, Egit, Eclipse, and GitHub for version control
- Win-Vector blog on minimal version control lesson
- Top 10 Git Tutorials for Beginners
- Aha moments when learning Git
Listener Feedback
- Daniel provides link to Open Education Database: www.oedb.org/open
- StatisticsBlog: www.statisticsblog.com
- Aron: Big data and parallel processing
- Eric: Questions about data structures
- Adam: Text mining and workflow
- Randall offers first donation for the R-Podcast (thanks, Randall!)
R Community Roundup
- Visualization of season performance of NCAA tournament teams by Rodrigo Zamith
- Plotting lm and glm models with ggplot via strengejacke.wordpress.com
Package pick
- reports: An R package to assist in the workflow of writing academic articles and other reports (via TRinker’s blog)
How to interact with the show
- Submit your questions and comments via the R-Podcast contact page, or send an email to theRcast(at)gmail.com
- Send in an audio comment via audio attachment to theRcast(at)gmail.com, or leave a voicemail on the R-Podcast voicemail hotline: +1-269-849-9780
- Get show updates via our Twitter account: @theRcast
- Follow us on our R-Podcast Google Plus page: gplus.to/thercast
- Provide your favorite R community links at the R-Podcast subreddit: links.r-podcast.org/
Music Credits
- The opening theme is entitled “Super Fighting Robot X” by WillRock from the Megaman X: Maverick Rising Album at ocremix.org
- The closing theme is entitled “Countdown to Infinity” by WillRock from the Megaman X: Maverick Rising Album at ocremix.org
Hosts
Eric Nantz
Eric Nantz is a principal research scientist at a large life sciences company, creating innovative analytical pipelines and capabilities supporting study designs and analyses. Outside of his day job, Eric is passionate about connecting with the R community as the creator/host of the R-Podcast, Shiny Developer Series, and a curator / podcast host for the R Weekly project. Plus, he likes to share his adventures with R and general computing on Twitch livestreams at twitch.tv/rpodcast.