Configuration File

Instead of passing command-line arguments, you can use a builder.ini file in your project root. Command-line arguments override config file values.

Usage

Create a builder.ini file, you can also call builder -init to create one.

input: srcr/
output: R/

Then run builder without arguments:

builder

Options

Option	Type	Default	Description
`input`	string	`srcr/`	Input directory
`output`	string	`R/`	Output directory
`prepend`	string	-	File to prepend to outputs
`append`	string	-	File to append to outputs
`bundle`	string	-	Bundle all outputs into a single file
`deadcode`	bool	`false`	Enable dead code detection
`sourcemap`	bool	`false`	Enable source maps
`clean`	bool	`true`	Clean output before build
`watch`	bool	`false`	Enable watch mode
`plugin`	list	-	Space-separated plugins
`import`	list	-	Space-separated imports
`depends`	list	-	Space-separated dev dependencies to check
`reader`	string	-	Define custom file type reader (format: `type function`)
`strip`	bool	`false`	Strip comments from output (preserves `#'` special comments)

Full Example

# Builder configuration
input: srcr/
output: R/

# File manipulation
prepend: inst/license.txt
append: inst/footer.txt
bundle: R/bundled.R

# Features
deadcode: true
sourcemap: false
clean: true
watch: false
strip: false

# Plugins and imports (space-separated)
plugin: mypkg::minify mypkg::lint
import: inst/types.rh inst/utils.rh

# Dev dependencies (space-separated R packages)
depends: testthat devtools roxygen2

# Custom file readers (one per line)
reader: tsv \(x) read.delim(x, sep="\t", header=FALSE)
reader: myformat mypackage::read_myformat

Profiles

You can define named profiles in your config file using [profile: <name>] headers. This lets you maintain multiple configurations (e.g., development vs. production) in a single file.

Common Settings

Any settings placed before the first [profile: ...] header are common and shared across all profiles. Profile-specific settings override these shared defaults.

# Common settings (shared by all profiles)
input: srcr/
output: R/
clean: true
depends: dplyr

[profile: dev]
sourcemap: true

[profile: prod]
sourcemap: false
strip: true

In this example, both dev and prod inherit input: srcr/, clean: true, and depends: dplyr. The dev profile enables source maps, while prod disables them and strips comments.

Selecting a Profile

Use the -profile flag to select which profile to use:

builder -profile dev
builder -profile prod

When your config file contains profiles, the -profile flag is required. Running builder without it will produce an error.

Config Without Profiles

If your config file has no [profile: ...] headers, it works exactly as before — no -profile flag is needed.

Overriding with CLI

Config values are defaults. CLI arguments take precedence:

# Uses config, but overrides input
builder -input other/

# Uses config, but disables cleaning
builder -noclean

Comments

Lines starting with # are ignored.