Things You Shouldn’t Change

A more accurate title for this page would be “Things You Shouldn’t Change Without a Good Reason.” The following are some of the things you should be careful about changing in the project:

The GitHub Action Files

The publishing workflow should work out of the box for Quarto projects, and for projects that are combined with R (with or without {renv}–but please do use {renv} if your project uses R). If you need to change this workflow file, it should only be because there is genuinely an issue with the configuration or if a dependency is not installed. You’re welcome to adjust or create your own publish workflow if needed, or you can contact staff at the OSC for help.

The .gitignore

This has been set-up to ignore annoying or unneeded components of R projects/packages, Quarto projects, and files that are commonly included in repositories even though they should not be. Feel free to add more files to the .gitignore if something is missing from your project, but, in general, you should not delete items from this file.

The _quarto.yml File

We aim for our tutorials to have a standard look and feel, and the _quarto.yml file is a big part of that. If you need to change this file beyond the required adjustments mentioned in previous chapters, please contact staff at the OSC for help. We’re always open for improvements to the design, but we do want to make sure any changes get applied across all tutorials.

The LICENSE Files

The license files are there to protect the intellectual property of the authors and the OSC, and should not be changed unless there are legal reasons or extenuating circumstances to do so. If you have questions about the license, please contact staff at the OSC.

The CITATION File

The CITATION file is there to help others cite your work, and we have tried to select useful fields provided by the Citation File Format. As with the _quarto.yml file, we’re open to suggestions if more fields should be added, but please contact staff at the OSC before making changes.

The About Page

The yaml header in the About page is also standardized to approximately align with the CITATION file, but does not align exactly with CFF.