TLDR: As of today, the pkgdown sites for all rOpenSci packages on our docs server are built on r-universe. This is an internal change; no action is required for package maintainers.From Jenkins to r-universe For the past 2 years we have been using a Jenkins server to automatically build the pkgdown sites for all rOpenSci packages, which get published on https://docs.ropensci.org.

R-universe: your personal R space The r-universe platform provides users and organizations with a personal CRAN-like repository for publishing software, rmarkdown articles, and other content that fits in an R package.

Browsing articles on R-universe In the past weeks we have extended the R-universe build system and front-ends with some new features for publishing articles . Articles can be used for documentation of R packages, but also for other purposes, such as reports, tutorials, papers, or research compendia.Publishing of articles in R-universe is based on the R vignette system, and we may add support for other types of articles later on. The

The R-universe build system The R-universe system is a complex effort, consisting of numerous frontend and backend pieces that operate across various platforms. A key challenge in developing such a system is managing overall complexity by finding ways to reduce the problem into smaller, loosely coupled components, which can be thought of, and developed, somewhat independently.

At rOpenSci, we encourage R package developers to take advantage of Continuous Integration services to automatically check the package on different platforms, with different versions of R. The rOpenSci dev guide dedicates chapter 2 to the topic of Continuous Integration Best Practices , and recommends a few common CI vendors, including Travis CI. Travis CI has been a pioneer in free public CI services, and made the concept popular in the

As of earlier this year, we are now automatically building binaries and pkgdown documentation for all rOpenSci packages. One issue we encountered is that some packages include vignettes that require some special tools/data/credentials, which are unavailable on generic build servers.