useR! 2024

GitHub Actions provide an automated workflow for continuous integration and deployment, enhancing collaboration and code quality. This tutorial aims to demystify GitHub Actions, offering insights into their fundamentals and guiding participants through the process of crafting reusable actions tailored for R package development. The tutorial begins with an overview of GitHub Actions, elucidating their role in automating software workflows and boosting productivity in the R programming ecosystem. Attendees will gain a comprehensive understanding of the basics, including syntax, triggers, and workflow components, paving the way for seamless integration into their development pipelines. Building on this foundation, the tutorial delves into the creation of reusable actions, emphasizing best practices for designing modular, versatile components. The tutorial also showcases the benefits of running both development as well as CI/CD workflows in a common Docker container environment to guarantee reproducibility. Participants will learn how to encapsulate common tasks and share them across different projects, fostering a culture of code reuse within the R community.

Pre-requisites:
1. Create a GitHub account.
2. (Optional) Have Git and SSH installed on your computer, and have an SSH key ready.

Registration:
To add this tutorial to your registration, log in to your existing registration, click the Modify Registration button, and navigate to the Reg Options page (page 4). Select the tutorial you want to attend.

Docker is a cornerstone of modern software development and deployment, ensuring reproducibility, scalability, and seamless environment management across different platforms. This tutorial will examine the art and science of crafting efficient and optimised Docker images specifically tailored for R applications. *Description* Docker has revolutionised how we develop, deploy, and run applications by offering a lightweight, portable solution for application containerisation. For the R community, Docker presents an vital tool for addressing common challenges such as "it works on my machine", dependency management, and consistent environments across development and production systems. However, creating effective Docker images that are optimised for R applications requires a nuanced understanding of both Docker and R ecosystems. This tutorial aims to bridge that gap, providing attendees with the knowledge to build Docker images that are not only functional but also optimised for performance, size, and security.

Preparation:
In order to participate in this tutorial, please have (a) Docker installed and tested* (b) a text editor on your machine. Here are some resources with further links to installation instructions on the three major operating systems:

• Linux - https://datawookie.dev/blog/2024/06/installing-docker-on-linux/
• macOS - https://datawookie.dev/blog/2024/06/installing-docker-on-macos/
• Windows - https://datawookie.dev/blog/2024/06/installing-docker-on-windows/

*it is imperative that Docker be installed and tested before the session because there will not be any time to resolve problems around this during the tutorial.

Registration:
To add this tutorial to your registration, log in to your existing registration, click the Modify Registration button, and navigate to the Reg Options page (page 4). Select the tutorial you want to attend.

Did you always want to contribute to (base) R but don't know how? This tutorial shows cases where and how users have contributed actively to (base) R, by submitting bug reports with minimal reproducible examples, how testing, reading source code, and providing patches to the R source code has helped making R better. A selection of past bug reports are provided for you to practice debugging. For bugs that have been resolved you can check what happened after the bug was reported.

Preparation:
https://github.com/gmbecker/contributing_to_r_lesson

Registration:
To add this tutorial to your registration, log in to your existing registration, click the Modify Registration button, and navigate to the Reg Options page (page 4). Select the tutorial you want to attend.