Using here outside of Rstudio Projects (works..., but why and how)

[RobinKohrs]

So this is basically my file structure more or less. I have a "parent-dir" (my_analysis_project) which is a git-repo. It contains two directories. One R package and one folder with a lot of quarto documents. Kind of like this:

my_analysis_project/
 |.git
 |.gitignore
├── research_package/         
│   ├── R/
│   │   └── some_functions.R
│   ├── data/
│   │   └── package_data.csv
│   ├── research_package.Rproj # An RStudio project *for this package*
│   └── DESCRIPTION
│
└── reports_and_docs/        
    ├── data_inputs/           
    │   └── report_specific_raster.tif
    ├── images/
    │   └── logo.png
    ├── report1.qmd
    ├── report2.qmd
    └── _quarto.yml 

I am working on the report1.qmd file and I would like to access the report_specific_raster.tif using best practices. I tried a couple of things that did not work, but what is working is

here("reports_and_docs", "data_inputs", "report_specific_raster.tif")

And I wondering why that is. Somehow the my_analysis_project is set to as the project-home although there is no .Rproj-file. Am I missing something very obvious here?

[jennybc]

Somehow the my_analysis_project is set to as the project-home although there is no .Rproj-file. Am I missing something very obvious here?

In general here::dr_here() is a great way to see here's analysis of whether it considers you to be in a project and why (or why not). I predict that if you run it you will see it's because you're inside a Git repo.

Here are the criteria that the here package uses (by default, at least) to determine the project's top-level folder:

here/R/zzz.R

Line 4 in b4cf0b6

set_root_crit(is_here | is_rstudio_project | is_r_package | is_remake_project | is_projectile_project | is_vcs_root)

So here does not just look for an RStudio Project. In your case, this is a Git repo, which fulfills the is_vcs_root criterion.