Documenting packages

In roxygen2: In-Line Documentation for R

#| include: false

knitr::opts_chunk$set(
  collapse = TRUE,
  comment = "#>"
)

As well as documenting every object inside the package, you can also document the package itself by documenting the special sentinel "_PACKAGE". This automatically includes information parsed from the DESCRIPTION, including title, description, list of authors, and useful URLs.

We recommend placing package documentation in {pkgname}-package.R, and have @keywords internal. Use usethis::use_package_doc() to set up automatically. Here's an example:

#| eval: false

#' @keywords internal
"_PACKAGE"

Package documentation is a good place to put # Package options that documents options used by the package.

Some notes:

• By default, aliases will be added so that both ?pkgname and package?pkgname will find the package help. If there's an existing function called pkgname, use @aliases {pkgname}-package NULL to override the default.

• Use @references to point to published material about the package that users might find helpful.

roxygen2 documentation built on May 1, 2026, 5:06 p.m.