My PI is building a large stats book using Bookdown for a machine learning course. We've been delighted with Bookdown so far but are still struggling with how to build it faster when we have small edits to make.
For example, we have one chapter listing assigned readings and homeworks. We'd like to update that page several times a week to add answer keys or additional readings, but it requires up to a half hour rebuilding the entire book.
We are already caching large code chunks. Helpful, but it requires knowing exactly what chunks are causing the slowdowns. Sometimes it's obvious, other times less so. And of course we also see that caching more than minimally necessary is not recommended.
I saw the issue was raised in 2017 and endorsed by other stats book authors. It seems surprising there is still no built-in method for rebuilding a single book chapter, given how many stats books are built on Bookdown.
Without that feature being available, what are other authors using to solve the build speed issue? We're considering the Drake package but aren't sure if we have the time to implement prior to the spring 2021 semester. Has anyone had experience with Drake and Bookdown and can comment on the learning curve?
Any recommendations for either other packages or techniques we can try would be very much appreciated!