explore integration with packer

[timelyportfolio]

In an effort to enhance the experience for users more accustomed to R than JavaScript, explore integration with packer from @JohnCoene.

[John Coene]

Let me know if I can help!

[Elliot Hershberg]

This sounds like a really cool idea! I’ve recently built a package using reactR (thank you for making such a great package). One thing I’ve noticed is that the scaffolding step copies the template webpack.config.js and package.json.

This works, but the webpack version that gets installed is webpack v4. I’ve only briefly looked at packer, which looks awesome. It looks like there are functions for detecting outdated NPM packages and also updating them. @JohnCoene could using these help with not relying on the template files that become out of date?

I’d be interested in potentially helping with this integration, this package has been really helpful for me.

[John Coene]

packer is essentially a lot of convenience functions to setup R-projects that use webpack, because I find that webpack comes with quite some overhead.

I think you can always run npm update to bump webpack in the project.

[timelyportfolio]

@JohnCoene @elliothershberg In the next upgrade, I will make sure that the webpack version gets updated in the template. We lock in a specific version to insure that everything works. I'll test newest webpack to see if any additional changes are required.

I like the idea of using packer for the convenience npm/node functions that I believe are more understandable for the R user without as much JavaScript experience since they are accessed from the R console instead of terminal.