spacy_install() - git needed?

[seb-29]

I just downloaded spacyr 1.3.0 from CRAN. When running install_spacy(), I received the following error message:

Error in pyenv_bootstrap_windows() :
Please install git and ensure it is on your PATH

What exactly is git? Is it also required when running the manual installation as described on the spacyr Github page?

[kbenoit]

We should add that to the instruction page. But it's easy to install git, see https://github.com/git-guides/install-git.

[JBGruber]

For some reason I remembered there were more instructions if that error comes up. Maybe we could do something like this:

if (identical(Sys.which("git"), "") && is_windows())
  stop("Please install git and ensure it is on your PATH. See ",
       "<https://happygitwithr.com/install-git> for more information")

It's only an issue on Windows (is_windows() alread exists) and the linked chapter is quite good, if I remember correctly. I've also seen other packages link to it, e.g., usethis

[seb-29]

Thank you both! @JBGruber: Do I need to setup Git with username & email address (chapter 7 / happygitwithr) if I only need Git to use spacyr in RStudio?

[JBGruber]

My understanding is that git is only used to download Python. So I don't think you need to log into, or even have an account!