Initiate and maintain an isolated, project-specific, and runtime-pure R setup via Nix.
Source:R/rix_init.R
rix_init.Rd
Creates an isolated project folder for a Nix-R configuration.
rix::rix_init()
also adds, appends, or updates with or without backup a
custom .Rprofile
file with code that initializes a startup R environment
without system's user libraries within a Nix software environment. Instead,
it restricts search paths to load R packages exclusively from the Nix store.
Additionally, it makes Nix utilities like nix-shell
available to run system
commands from the system's RStudio R session, for both Linux and macOS.
Arguments
- project_path
Character with the folder path to the isolated nix-R project. If the folder does not exist yet, it will be created.
- rprofile_action
Character. Action to take with
.Rprofile
file destined forproject_path
folder. Possible values include"create_missing"
, which only writes.Rprofile
if it does not yet exist (otherwise does nothing) - this is the action set when usingrix()
- ;"create_backup"
, which copies the existing.Rprofile
to a new backup file, generating names with POSIXct-derived strings that include the time zone information. A new.Rprofile
file will be written with default code fromrix::rix_init()
;"overwrite"
overwrites the.Rprofile
file if it does exist;"append"
appends the existing file with code that is tailored to an isolated Nix-R project setup.- message_type
Character. Message type, defaults to
"simple"
, which gives minimal but sufficient feedback. Other values are currently"quiet
, which writes.Rprofile
without message, and"verbose"
, which displays the mechanisms implemented to achieve fully controlled R project environments in Nix.
Value
Nothing, this function only has the side-effect of writing a file called ".Rprofile" to the specified path.
Details
Enhancement of computational reproducibility for Nix-R environments:
The primary goal of rix::rix_init()
is to enhance the computational
reproducibility of Nix-R environments during runtime. Concretely, if you
already have a system or user library of R packages (if you have R installed
through the usual means for your operating system), using rix::rix_init()
will prevent Nix-R environments to load packages from the user library which
would cause issues. Notably, no restart is required as environmental
variables are set in the current session, in addition to writing an
.Rprofile
file. This is particularly useful to make with_nix()
evaluate custom R functions from any "Nix-to-Nix" or "System-to-Nix" R
setups. It introduces two side-effects that take effect both in a current or
later R session setup:
Adjusting
R_LIBS_USER
path: By default, the first path ofR_LIBS_USER
points to the user library outside the Nix store (see alsobase::.libPaths()
). This creates friction and potential impurity as R packages from the system's R user library are loaded. While this feature can be useful for interactively testing an R package in a Nix environment before adding it to a.nix
configuration, it can have undesired effects if not managed carefully. A major drawback is that all R packages in theR_LIBS_USER
location need to be cleaned to avoid loading packages outside the Nix configuration. Issues, especially on macOS, may arise due to segmentation faults or incompatible linked system libraries. These problems can also occur if one of the (reverse) dependencies of an R package is loaded along the process.Make Nix commands available when running system commands from RStudio: In a host RStudio session not launched via Nix (
nix-shell
), the environmental variables from~/.zshrc
or~/.bashrc
may not be inherited. Consequently, Nix command line interfaces likenix-shell
might not be found. The.Rprofile
code written byrix::rix_init()
ensures that Nix command line programs are accessible by adding the path of the "bin" directory of the default Nix profile,"/nix/var/nix/profiles/default/bin"
, to thePATH
variable in an RStudio R session.
These side effects are particularly recommended when working in flexible R
environments, especially for users who want to maintain both the system's
native R setup and utilize Nix expressions for reproducible development
environments. This init configuration is considered pivotal to enhance the
adoption of Nix in the R community, particularly until RStudio in Nixpkgs is
packaged for macOS. We recommend calling rix::rix_init()
prior to comparing R
code ran between two software environments with rix::with_nix()
.
rix::rix_init()
is called automatically by rix::rix()
when generating a
default.nix
file, and when called by rix::rix()
will only add the .Rprofile
if none exists. In case you have a custom .Rprofile
that you wish to keep
using, but also want to benefit from what rix_init()
offers, manually call
it and set the rprofile_action
to "append"
.
Examples
if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# create an isolated, runtime-pure R setup via Nix
project_path <- "./sub_shell"
if (!dir.exists(project_path)) dir.create(project_path)
rix_init(
project_path = project_path,
rprofile_action = "create_missing",
message_type = c("simple")
)
} # }