link2GI

Package website: release

link2GI provide some functions which make it a bit easier to connect straightforward the common open source GI software packages to the R-biotop. It supports both the use of wrapper packages and the direct API-use via system calls. It focuses on Linux and WindowsX operating systems but nevertheless it should also work with OSX.

If you have several versions installed or if you want to use the full power of the GI software it will be a nice and helpful tool to deal with some strange behaviours and requirements. Especially helpful is the support of OTB, the GDAL-Python functions and a simple support to use any SAGA version via the CLI. Hopefully RSAGA and Rsagacmd will join forces in one package in the future. Anyway the current releases (1.4.1) of RSAGA as well as Rsagacmd will work with the environment settings as provided by linkSAGA.

Installation

link2GIis up to CRAN. For the installation of the stable version please use install.packages("link2GI").

However it is strongly recommended to install the latest stable version:

# devtools package
devtools::install_github("r-spatial/link2GI", ref = "master")
# remotes package
remotes::install_github("r-spatial/link2GI",ref = "master")

Third Party software

To utilize the power of the open source GI tools from within R you need to install them first. As a first promising opportunity to do fulfill most of the requirements you may install QGIS, GRASS, SAGA-GIS and Orfeo-toolbox. For further Information have a look at the Installation guide for link2GI related Software.

New Feature

initProj for reproducible projects

initProj provides a complete and flexible lightweight working environment for GI projects. The focus is on a simple but powerful structure. The basic framework is formed by a defined folder structure, initial scripts and configuration templates as well as optional Git repositories and an renv environment. A corresponding RStudio project file is also created. It supports the automatic installation (if needed) and loading of the required libraries including various standard setup skeletons to simplify project initialisation.

The function creates a skeleton of the skeleton scripts main-control.R, pre-processing.R, 10-processing.R and post-processing.R, and creates corresponding parameter configurations files stored as yaml files in scr/configs/. The script src/functions/000_settings.R holds all specific project settings. Easy access to all project paths is provided via the list variable dirs, which enables simple, efficient and reproducible project management and data handling.

For further Information have a look at the article Reproducible Projects.

When using RStudio, a new project can be created by simply selecting the Create Project Structure (link2GI) template from the File -> New Project -> New Directory -> New Project Wizard dialogue.