README.md

In link2GI: Linking Geographic Information Systems, Remote Sensing and Other Command Line Tools

link2GI

Package website: release

link2GI provide some functions which make it a bit easier to connect straightforward the common open source GI software packages to the R-biotop. It supports both the use of wrapper packages and the direct API-use via system calls. It focuses on Linux and WindowsX operating systems but nevertheless it should also work with OSX.

If you have several versions installed or if you want to use the full power of the GI software it will be a nice and helpful tool to deal with some strange behaviours and requirements. Especially helpful is the support of OTB, the GDAL-Python functions and a simple support to use any SAGA version via the CLI. Hopefully RSAGA and Rsagacmd will join forces in one package in the future. Anyway the current releases (1.4.1) of RSAGA as well as Rsagacmd will work with the environment settings as provided by linkSAGA.

Installation

link2GIis up to CRAN. For the installation of the stable version please use install.packages("link2GI").

However it is strongly recommended to install the latest stable version:

# devtools package
devtools::install_github("r-spatial/link2GI", ref = "master")
# remotes package
remotes::install_github("r-spatial/link2GI",ref = "master")

Third Party software

To utilize the power of the open source GI tools from within R you need to install them first. As a first promising opportunity to do fulfill most of the requirements you may install QGIS, GRASS, SAGA-GIS and Orfeo-toolbox. For further Information have a look at the Installation guide for link2GI related Software.

New Features

OTB wrapper

The OTB integration in link2GI has evolved from a basic command wrapper into a robust, Self-describing CLI interface. It now derives valid parameters directly from OTB’s CLI metadata, supports version-stable command construction, and enforces explicit, reproducible, on-disk outputs (OTB Wrapper in link2GI.).

initProj for reproducible projects

initProj provides a lightweight but robust setup for reproducible GI projects. It creates a clear folder structure, initial scripts, configuration templates, and optionally a Git repository and an renv environment. An RStudio project file is generated automatically, supporting fast and consistent project startup.

The function generates a minimal workflow skeleton (main-control.R, pre-processing.R, processing.R, post-processing.R) with YAML-based configuration files in src/configs/. All project-specific settings are centralized in src/functions/000_settings.R. Project paths are exposed via a single dirs list, enabling simple, reproducible data handling.

For details, see the article Reproducible Projects.

In RStudio, a new project can be created via File → New Project → New Directory → Create Project Structure (link2GI).

link2GI documentation built on Dec. 23, 2025, 9:09 a.m.