R Dev Day @ PLUS

Friday July 12, 2024
Paris Lodron University of Salzburg (PLUS), Austria
#RDevDayPLUS2024

Collaborate on contributions to base R!

An R Dev Day will be held as a satellite event to useR! 2024. This will be an opportunity for novice and experienced contributors to work alongside members of the R Core Team on contributions to base R. Interested contributors are encouraged to self-nominate by Sunday March 24, 2024.

The outside of the Faculty of Natural and Life Sciences building: a large, modern building with several glass-house style atriums.

What will happen at the R Dev Day?

Tasks will be prepared in the run-up to the event, but are likely to include:

Reviewing, analysing and fixing bugs in code or documentation reported on R’s Bugzilla.
Contributing to message translations via Weblate.

Who can take part?

The sprint will involve a mixture of invited and self-nominated participants, so that we have contributors at all experience levels.

The main criteria for participation is a good knowledge of R programming and a keen interest in contributing, as we hope participants continue to contribute after the event. The table below shows the type of knowledge/skills we expect participants to have

Skills most will have	Skills some will have
Writing R functions	Programming in C
Debugging R functions	Knowledge of S3/S4 classes and methods
Writing R help files	Expertise in statistical methods in stats, splines
Using git/Subversion	Able to build R from source

Other specialist skills e.g. expertise in building Windows/MacOS GUIs or fluency in a language with a low percentage of translated messages on Weblate, would of course be welcome!

It will help if you have some experience in contributing to base R, but novice contributors will be mentored in the run-up to the event. There will also be a Contributing to R tutorial at useR! 2024, which we encourage novice contributors to attend.

We are keen to foster a diverse community of contributors. If you are a member of the R-Ladies, MiR, RainbowR, AfricaR, ArabR, AsiaR, or LatinR communities, or otherwise identify as part of an underrepresented group among R contributors, then we especially encourage you to self-nominate! To ensure a welcoming environment, we have a code of conduct in place.

Apply for a place

Anyone one interested to attend the sprint is encouraged to self-nominate via the application form by Sunday March 24 (anywhere on earth). You will be asked about your experience, skills and background to help us balance participation overall.

Thanks to the R Foundation, participants can attend the R Dev Day free of charge, with refreshments and lunch provided. We regret that support is not available for travel or accommodation, but note that diversity and need-based scholarships are available for useR! 2024, which precedes the R Dev Day (deadline 17 March, 11:59 CET). Scholarship recipients would be expected to participate fully in useR! 2024, otherwise registration at useR! 2024 is not required to participate in R Dev Day.

Participation is in person by default. If you are an established contributor and wish to support the event remotely, please contact the organizing team.

Practicalities

The sprint will be held in the Faculty of Natural and Life Sciences at PLUS, which is ~30 minutes from the useR! 2024 venue by public transport.

See the travel information on the PLUS website for more detail.

Organizing team

This event is being organized by members of R Contribution Working Group in coordination with the R Core Team.

Headshot of Heather Turner. She is a white woman in her 40s with long dark hair and wears glasses.
Heather Turner
University of Warwick

Headshot of Shannon Pileggi
Shannon Pileggi
The Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Consortium

Contact

For queries about this event, please contact r-dev-day-plus-team@gaggle.email.