PHSGeo - Helper to install R geospatial packages

This package helps with the installation of geospatial packages;

sf
terra
sp
raster
rgdal
leaflet

The package is written for a highly specific environment and is not intended for wider usage; the methods provided are unlikely to work in a more general setup.

This package is NOT supported or commissioned by any organisation and usage is at your own risk as per the license conditions.

Installation

Install PHSGeo from GitHub;

devtools::install_github("https://github.com/jrh-dev/PHSGeo")

Usage

To install geospatial packages

To install all of the geospatial packages listed above;

PHSGeo::install_geospatial()

To install a specific geospatial package from those listed above;

PHSGeo::install_geospatial(pkgs = "sf")

To install a subset of geospatial packages from those listed above;

PHSGeo::install_geospatial(pkgs = c("sf", "terra"))

If you want to perform a clean installation of the geospatial package dependencies (R package dependencies NOT system dependencies) run with clean = TRUE;

# to install all packages
PHSGeo::install_geospatial(clean = TRUE)

# to install a specific package
PHSGeo::install_geospatial(pkgs = "sf, clean = TRUE)

Please note that using clean = TRUE should be a last resort when installation has proved problematic. Removing and performing a fresh installation of all geospatial dependencies will take a long time, is typically unnecessary, and the package versions removed will NOT be respected during re-installation.

No testing has been performed to ascertain compatibility with environment managers such as .renv.

Post installation - on every usage of geospatial packages

Following installation some changes must be made to the users environment before the packages can be used. The user must make these changes every time a geospatial package is used.

The simplest way to ensure the environment is ready to use a geospatial package is to add PHSGeo::setup_env() to every script utilising these packages. The code should run before geospatial libraries are loaded and the PHSGeo package should never be loaded with a call to library(), always access PHSGeo with its namespace.

PHSGeo::setup_env()

library(sf)
library(terra)

What does this package do?

Primarily, the package exists to detect the locations of installed system dependencies for geospatial packages. This ensures that differing lib versions between users individual sessions should be resolved without the user needing an understanding of the underlying linux file system.

A number of assumptions have been made about the system on which this package will run and compatibility with other systems is not expected.

The package also handles installation of the geospatial packages utilising configurations suggested by SME's in the guidance published here. Whilst this package attempts to ease the implementation of the official guidance, users should refer back to that guidance in the case of doubt.

The package is capable of detecting, removing, and performing a fresh installation of geospatial package dependencies. However, use of this feature is discouraged except as a last resort and users may experience inconvenience as a result of such action.