Handling file paths in development vs installed directory

[yogat3ch]

Hey @ColinFay & @VincentGuyader,
I'm in the midst of writing supporting functions that determine the appropriate path to a directory depending on whether the golem is being developed or whether it's installed as the directory structure changes once installed.
This mostly includes handling the location of files in the inst directory when developing vs when installed such that file paths work in both instances.
Though I'm thinking you or someone else has already probably encountered this issue before! Are there any existing solutions to making sure file file paths work properly in both states of the package?

[ColinFay]

Hey @yogat3ch,

This is what the app_sys() function was designed for. You can find it inside the app_config.R file.

L inst/
  L this.xyz

can be read with app_sys("this.xyz")

L inst/
  L that / 
    L this.xyz

can be read with app_sys("that/this.xyz")

This function is a wrapper around system.file(package = ), that allows to point to the current directory (during dev) or to the path where the package is installed on the current machine. That allows to refer to file on any computer.

For example, on my laptop, if I want to refer to https://github.com/ThinkR-open/golem/tree/master/inst/shinyexample

> system.file("shinyexample", package = "golem")
[1] "/Users/colin/Library/R/x86_64/4.2/library/golem/shinyexample

And this will return a different result on your machine.

[yogat3ch]

Of course ya'll already accounted for this! I did not understand the utility of the app_sys function somehow. Thank you for the guidance @ColinFay 🙏