Create or modify a DESCRIPTION file

use_description() creates a DESCRIPTION file. Although mostly associated with R packages, a DESCRIPTION file can also be used to declare dependencies for a non-package project. Within such a project, devtools::install_deps() can then be used to install all the required packages. Note that, by default, use_decription() checks for a CRAN-compliant package name. You can turn this off with check_name = FALSE.

usethis consults the following sources, in this order, to set DESCRIPTION fields:

• fields argument of create_package() or use_description()

• getOption("usethis.description")

• Defaults built into usethis

The fields discovered via options or the usethis package can be viewed with use_description_defaults().

If you create a lot of packages, consider storing personalized defaults as a named list in an option named "usethis.description". Here's an example of code to include in .Rprofile, which can be opened via edit_r_profile():

options(
  usethis.description = list(
    `Authors@R` = 'person("Jane", "Doe", email = "jane@example.com",
                          role = c("aut", "cre"),
                          comment = c(ORCID = "YOUR-ORCID-ID"))',
    License = "MIT + file LICENSE",
    Language =  "es"
  )
)

Prior to usethis v2.0.0, getOption("devtools.desc") was consulted for backwards compatibility, but now only the "usethis.description" option is supported.

use_description(fields = list(), check_name = TRUE, roxygen = TRUE)

use_description_defaults(package = NULL, roxygen = TRUE, fields = list())

Arguments

fields	A named list of fields to add to DESCRIPTION, potentially overriding default values. See use_description() for how you can set personalized defaults using package options.
check_name	Whether to check if the name is valid for CRAN and throw an error if not.
roxygen	If TRUE, sets RoxygenNote to current roxygen2 version
package	Package name

See also

The description chapter of R Packages

Examples

if (FALSE) {
use_description()

use_description(fields = list(Language = "es"))

use_description_defaults()
}