Vise

A vise or vice is a mechanical apparatus used to secure an object to allow work to be performed on it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vise

The {vise} package is a thin wrapper around {renv}, {desc}, and {remotes} that is designed to manage and update renv lockfiles in a project. This explicitly works with The Carpentries lessons, but could be extended for other use.

Features

• ci_sysreqs() gather and install system requirements from a {renv} lockfile that de-duplicates the system calls and uses a single command.
• ci_update() updates a lockfile in two ways: 1. scans project for new packages and 2. updates existing packages to their latest versions on cran. This is useful for creating pull requests with the changed lockfile to trigger previews with the new package versions.
• lock2desc() convert a lockfile to a DESCRIPTION file
• verify_simple_vector() verifies that an input vector is actually a simple vector and not malicious code.

Goals

This was originally intended to be the package that encompassed the {renv} components from {sandpaper} so that it could be further exploited for non-Carpentries uses. Time constraints have delayed that vision.

Instead, this is a lightweight package for use in The Carpentries GitHub Actions in order to provision and update packages so that the infrastructure does not need to install the entire {sandpaper} suite to provision new packages.