Unit Testing R Code

John Mount points out that you don’t need special infrastructure to perform unit testing in R:

There seems to be a general (false) impression among non R-core developers that to run tests, R package developers need a test management system such as RUnit or testthat. And a further false impression that testthat is the only R test management system. This is in fact not true, as R itself has a capable testing facility in “R CMD check” (a command triggering R checks from outside of any given integrated development environment).

By a combination of skimming the R-manuals ( https://cran.r-project.org/manuals.html ) and running a few experiments I came up with a description of how R-testing actually works. And I have adapted the available tools to fit my current preferred workflow. This may not be your preferred workflow, but I have and give my reasons below.

Food for thought for any R developer.