GjjvdBurg / RSimpleVenv

A dead-simple way to create a "virtualenv" style local package directory for R

Simple Local Package Environment for R

This creates a "virtualenv" for R that can be easily setup through the command line and that works with Rscript (which packrat doesn't (easily?)).

The need for this arose when I wanted to have packages that were needed for a project in a local R library folder, much like virtualenv does in Python. After a bit of debugging, I created two scripts that together create a dead-simple local R library folder.

The script understands CRAN, GitHub, and local packages.

Usage

Basic usage:

$ mkdir -p ./rlibs
$ bash R_setup.sh Rpackages.txt ./rlibs

where Rpackages.txt is a file with one package per line, for example:

sparsestep
SyncRNG
github:GjjvdBurg/RGensvm
local:/path/to/local/package

A common way to use this is to place the above two lines of bash in a Makefile, for instance:

RLIBS=./rlibs

all: setup
        Rscript ./my_R_script.sh

setup:
        mkdir -p $(RLIBS)
        bash R_setup.sh Rpackages.txt $(RLIBS)

This would run the R code with the local library directory.

How it works

The R_setup.sh creates an .Rprofile and an .Renviron file that set the local library path to the desired library directory. Any R script that runs from this directory therefore loads the packages from this package library instead of anywhere else.

Notes

License: MIT

Author: Gertjan van den Burg

Tested on Linux only, probably works on Mac. PRs welcome for Windows.