Setup Python Environment — setup_python

Sets up a tiered Python virtual environment.

Usage

setup_python_env(envname = "textanalysisr-env", tier = "core", force = FALSE)

Arguments

envname: Character string name for the virtual environment (default: "textanalysisr-env")
tier: Which feature tier to install. One or more of: "core" (spacy + pdfplumber, ~200 MB; default), "embeddings" (adds sentence-transformers + transformers + torch, ~1 GB), "topics" (adds BERTopic + UMAP + HDBSCAN, ~300 MB on top of embeddings).
force: Logical, whether to recreate environment if it exists (default: FALSE)

Value

Invisible TRUE if successful, stops with error message if failed

Details

Default tier = "core" keeps the install light – spaCy NLP and PDF text extraction only. Add "embeddings" for sentence-transformers-based similarity/sentiment, and "topics" for BERTopic.

The virtual environment is isolated; system Python is not modified.

Examples

if (interactive()) {
  setup_python_env()                              # core only (~200 MB)
  setup_python_env(tier = c("core", "embeddings"))  # +1 GB
  setup_python_env(tier = c("core", "embeddings", "topics"))  # full stack
}