Sourcing scripts for whole projects and related questions

[tomas-brito-devoto]

Hi!
I'm writing my thesis in Quarto and I have an data-processing.R script where I do all the computations for data analysis, tables and graphs generation. When trying to include some inline code in other chapters (i.e. r nrow(my_table)), it doesn't work. The only way i've managed to make it work is by including a source("scripts/data-processing.R" at the beggining of the chapter. While I could include this in every chapter, I wonder if there's a better way.

I've tried different options like including sys.source("scripts/data-processing.R", envir = knitr::knit_global()) in the index.qmd, and the project: pre-render: "scripts/data-processing.R" option in the YAML, but neither work. Another option would be {{< include scripts/data-processing.R>}} but I don't know how it would be different from source() (also, I'm not sure where to type the underscore to ignore/not include the text in the final rendered manuscript).

Related questions include:

• I have execute: freeze: auto and cache:true in the _yml. of the project. Will it double the cache/space if I source() or {{< include >}} the data processing script in every chapter?
• When I freeze a chapter, I'm caching everything in it, but when I cache: TRUE I only cache the R chunks, right? Should I have both options enabled to speed up rendering and avoid recalculating everything? Or am I doubling the disk space used needlessly?

Thanks!

[tomas-brito-devoto]

I also found this option, but I'm not sure how to implement it.