This repository shows how to use make for a data analysis project.

The paper (PDF) is generated from a LaTeX source file, a table, and a figure.

make uses a set of instructions in makefile to generate the table and figure using R code and a datafile, and then generate the PDF from the manuscript.

make is clever because it deconstructs each part of the analysis so that only parts that have changed need to be rerun. If the data change, everything is rerun. If figure-generating code changes, only that code and the manuscript are rerun. If only the manuscript changes, only pdflatex is rerun. It's smart like that.

Basically it works on a directed acyclic graph (DAG) model, represented by this network graph:

## Registered S3 methods overwritten by 'ggplot2':
##   method         from 
##   [.quosures     rlang
##   c.quosures     rlang
##   print.quosures rlang

The R file analysis.R shows what is going on in makefile using possibly more familiar R syntax. The README.Rmd file contains the code to construct the above graph from an arbitrary makefile.

Zach Jones has a good tutorial about all of this.