How to use r-hub docker containers in GitHub actions

[Bisaloo]

Apologies if this topic has been treated and I missed it.

GitHub actions can use custom Docker containers and it would be useful to be able to easily plug containers from r-hub to avoid having to test regularly uncommon platforms on r-hub. I'm sure this is already possible but a blog post would be super helpful for people unfamiliar with Docker and/or creating custom GitHub actions.

To tell a little bit about my use case: I have a package that commonly has issues on noLD platforms because it parse binary data that might have been created on a machine with higher precision (https://www.github.com/ropensci/lightr). I have to remember to test it specifically on noLD each time and I don't always... Having it in my regular CI checks would be simpler.

[gaborcsardi]

This is a good idea, but unfortunately I won't be able to do it in the near future.

[maelle]

@Bisaloo would you feel like writing it?

[Bisaloo]

@maelle, I could give it a go but first I need to figure out to do it 😅

[Bisaloo]

This is what I managed to do: https://github.com/ropensci/lightr/blob/ea244bc71eea44f61b5f4da3aae4a5da4fb6a066/.github/workflows/R-CMD-check_noLD.yaml

Two main difficulties:

• it looks like pak doesn't support debian for automatic sysdeps installs . At least, at the moment.
• it might due to my limited knowledge of Docker but I had to tweak the path for R & Rscript commands to become available

[Bisaloo]

I think my question is now answered here: https://r-hub.github.io/containers/gha.html