Speaker
Description
R has excellent tooling for documenting functions via roxygen2, but no equivalent for test cases. Who wrote a test? Who reviewed it? What requirement does it verify? This information often lives in comments or external documents - disconnected from the code.
The roxyreqs package extends roxygen2 to support @meta tags above test_that() blocks:
#' @meta author Alice
#' @meta reviewer Bob
#' @meta review_date 2025-01-15
#' @meta description Validates input parsing
test_that("parse_input handles edge cases", { ... })
A custom JUnit reporter exports this metadata for automated reporting, similar to pytest for Python. Validation functions ensure all tests contain required tags. This is a first step toward generating validation documentation directly from code.
This approach is especially useful in regulated industries, such as pharma and finance, where traceability between requirements and tests is mandatory. But any team benefits from clearer test ownership and structured metadata for reporting.
The package also supports @meta tags for function documentation, enabling requirement IDs for traceability and risk classifications for compliance assessments.
roxyreqs is currently used internally but will be released as open source - we welcome feedback from the R community.
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Claude Code: Spell Check.
| Keywords: Please list up to 5 keywords to help us find the right session for your contribution. | roxygen2, testthat, test documentation, validation |
|---|---|
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