---
layout: page
---
## Packages
ProjectTemplate is not designed to help you write R packages. If you're
looking to do that, you should start by looking at the `package.skeleton()`
function provided by the `utils` package. After that, you might consider
looking into the [`devtools`](https://github.com/hadley/devtools) package that Hadley Wickham is developing.

If it's not clear to you why ProjectTemplate isn't meant to help you write
your own package, here are some important ways in which a statistical analysis
project differs from a package:

* A project is built around exactly one data set, while a package should work with many different data sets.
* A project is something specific: your goal is to learn a specific fact about the world from a specific data set. In contrast, a package should contain general purpose tools for analyzing many different data sets. For example, a package might contain code to perform linear regression, while a project would contain code that performs linear regression on a specific set of variables, such as height and annual income.
