December 7, 2016

Install a recent version of R

SpaDES requires R version 3.2.2 or greater but works best with R version 3.3.1 or greater.

Download and install the latest version of R (3.3.2) from https://cran.rstudio.com/

Install the latest RStudio

Install SpaDES

Ensure you have updated the packages on your computer, installed the latest development version of the SpaDES package and its dependencies:

## update your packages and install prerequisites
update.packages(ask = FALSE, checkBuilt = TRUE)
install.packages(c("devtools", "knitr", "profvis", "rmarkdown", "SpaDES"),
                 dependencies = TRUE)

## install SpaDES to your default package library
## to install elsewhere use 'withr::with_libpaths()'
devtools::install_github("PredictiveEcology/SpaDES@development",
                         dependencies = TRUE)

# check package version
packageVersion("SpaDES") ## should be >= 1.3.1.9016

Additional dependencies

Important note (esp. for non-Windows users):

Installing SpaDES will install a number of additional spatial packages, some of which have additional system dependencies not covered by simply installing the R package.

See this post on how to ensure you can install the system dependencies required to install these packages.

Brainstorm your SpaDES needs

  • Use a pre-existing module as is? Which one(s)?

  • Modify a pre-exising module? Enhance it? Fix bugs?

  • Are you going to make a new module?

  • Add a new module to a group of other modules (e.g., add fires to vegetation dynamics)?

  • Learn some ecological modeling?

  • Come with specific problems …

Data & Model

  • Bring any data that you would like to work with
  • If you have a conceptual model that you would like to work on, bring it

Create a new RStudio project

  1. From the File menu, select New Project….
  2. Select New Directory.
  3. Select Empty Project.
  4. Name your project and select where to save it.
  5. Don't worry about 'Packrat' and 'Git repositories'. Leave these unchecked.
  6. (Optional) You may want to open your project in a new Rstudio session.
  7. As we go through the workshop, keep your code in an .R or .Rmd file.