Q: how can I get to the source code of R packages using ESS?
When I'm working with elisp, I can access the source code for any
package easily with find-library or by following the links in
find-function or find-variable.
I'd like to be able to do the same thing with R
via Emacs Speaks Statistics (ess).
How can I get ess to send me to the source code of a given
function/package?
I have had some decent success with ess-r-xref. (require 'ess-r-xref) and then M-. (xref-find-definitions) with point on some symbol. It should prompt you to save a TAGS file. Then M-. should do what you want.
Check out https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Xref.html
Alternately:
I'm a big proponent of the Language Server Protocol. There's an R language server that should work with lsp-mode, but does not yet support find definition/reference requests AFAIK. I would recommend monitoring that project.
This is probably old, but I found out how to do it just looking at this question.
I installed ESS under Emacs 26.3 and I didn't do anything particular with this. It seems ess-r-xref works without doing any specific setting.
If do M-. or M-x xref-find-definitions and I am asked what I'm looking for ( auto-completion works nicely), than it opens a new buffer with the file containing the object I am looking for.
