Bundle .JAGS model files within an R package

Question

I am writing an R package which uses rjags as a dependency. My exported functions need to call rjags::jags.model("myModel.JAGS") internally.

I feel like I should bundle myModel.JAGS file within the exec folder, even if it is not a stricto-sensu "script". How should I then access it?

I find

#'@export
myFunction <- function () {

  # ...

  path <- path.package('myPackage')
  file <- file.path(path, 'exec', 'myModel.JAGS')
  rjags::jags.model(file, ...)

  # ...

}

a little hackish, is it?

Answer 1

You should use system.file with your package name, and put the file in the inst folder.

Anything in inst gets copied to the package folder when the package is installed, so if you have mypackage/inst/jags/mymodel.jags then you can do system.file("jags","mymodel.jags",package="mypackage") to get the path to your jags file.

Note that if you use devtools and load your packages in development mode instead of doing an install, then devtools will load some wrappers for system.file to look in inst/whatever/ so anything that uses this will work for an uninstalled package loaded via load_all.