Add working-directory input to setup-r-dependencies

[TNonet]

This is my attempt to close #438.

Looking for comments and feedback.

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Merging #441 (a641d28) into master (e2dce68) will not change coverage.
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[jimhester]

This looks good, could you test it out and verify it does what you want? You can use

- uses: TNonet/actions/setup-r-dependencies@master

To reference your code in your test workflow.

[TNonet]

Hi Jim,

I was wondering how to test these actions. It is good to know how to reference actions from other repos.

I will report back (and most likely update the PR).

[jimhester]

Thanks for working on this! I think I have been able to simplify your implementation a bit (31c24cc), and it seems to be working in a test. https://github.com/jimhester/r-actions-test/runs/4268523360?check_suite_focus=true#step:4:397

Try it out on your repo and let me know!

[TNonet]

Thanks Jim,

I agree your simplification is preferable. I was looking for some documentation on how paks::pkg_deps accepts a directory that is not the current directory.

This line is key!

"local::${{ inputs.working-directory }}"

I can confirm that the change works on my repo!

[riccardoporreca]

@TNonet, @jimhester, great to have this feature!

The same approach could be potentially extended to other actions, like check-r-package.
I am just wondering if working-directory is still the right name for the input: It is in fact the package source directory (and not the working directory where all steps are executed). This might also be confusing with the working-directory option of jobs.<job_id>.steps[*].run.

Not sure what good alternatives would be: pak calls the argument root as the "path to the tree" (see e.g. local_deps() local_install); in pkgdepends "directory that contains a package" (pkg_refs()); "path to a package directory" in rcmdcheck().
Perhaps package-path, package-directory, or package-root?

[TNonet]

@riccardoporreca I agree that working-directory might not be the best name choice anymore. I think any of your options would be fine.

One thought that did come to mind is that devtools::install_github uses a parameter called subdir. This is actually how our package is installed from github.

library(devtools)
install_github("hazimehh/L0Learn", subdir="R")

So I would want to offer package-subdir or package-subdirectory as alternatives to more closely match my belief for the intended use case, which is supporting multi-language repos with the following layouts.

https://github.com/USER_ORG/PKG_NAME/
├─ .github/workflows 
│ # actions run from this directory in most cases, therefore requiring `package-subdir` input in R actions to properly test R package
├─ python/
│  ├─ PKG_NAME/  # containing py src files
│  ├─ setup.py
├─ R/
│  ├─ DESCRIPTION
│  ├─ R/  # containing R src files
│  ├─ ...
├─ OTHER_LANGS/
├─ ...

[jimhester]

I think working directory seems reasonable, as you are specifying the working directory for the custom action.

[github-actions]

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