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R Development Container

Source: jimbrig/rdevcontainer: R Development Environment Using VSCode’s DevContainers and Docker (github.com)

Repository housing my customized R development environment using Visual Studio Code’s Development Containers feature.

This project serves the purpose of creating and maintaining an optimal development environment for R within a container based R environment using Visual Studio Code’s devcontainers and various R features for interacting with VSCode.

View this project’s progression over time through its auto-generated Changelog.

Table of Contents

Features

Currently the development environment runs with R version 4.1 and uses zsh as its default shell; radian is used as the default R terminal.

Development Container Images

The latest container images can be found in this repository’s package containers.

These may be utilized locally by including the image as the base image in your own devcontainer.json configuration file.

  • Pull image from the command line: docker pull ghcr.io/jimbrig/rdevcontainer:latest
  • Use as base image in Dockerfile: FROM ghcr.io/jimbrig/rdevcontainer:latest

Container Image Versions:

Dockerfile

View the Latest Dockerfile

# R version:
ARG VARIANT="4.1"
FROM rocker/r-ver:${VARIANT}

# Use the [Option] comment to specify true/false arguments that should appear in VS Code UX

# [Option] Install zsh
ARG INSTALL_ZSH="true"

# [Option] Upgrade OS packages to their latest versions
ARG UPGRADE_PACKAGES="true"

# Install needed packages and setup non-root user. Use a separate RUN statement to add your own dependencies.
ARG USERNAME=vscode
ARG USER_UID=1000
ARG USER_GID=$USER_UID

COPY library-scripts/*.sh /tmp/library-scripts/
COPY .Rprofile ${HOME}/.Rprofile

RUN apt-get update && export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive \
    && /bin/bash /tmp/library-scripts/common-debian.sh "${INSTALL_ZSH}" "${USERNAME}" "${USER_UID}" "${USER_GID}" "${UPGRADE_PACKAGES}" "true" "true" \
    && usermod -a -G staff ${USERNAME} \
    && apt-get -y install \
        python3-pip \
        libgit2-dev \
        libcurl4-openssl-dev \
        libssl-dev \
        libxml2-dev \
        libxt-dev \
    && apt-get autoremove -y && apt-get clean -y && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* /tmp/library-scripts \
    && python3 -m pip --no-cache-dir install radian \
    && install2.r --error --skipinstalled --ncpus -1 \
        devtools \
        languageserver \
        httpgd \
        rstudioapi \
        tidyverse \
    && rm -rf /tmp/downloaded_packages

# VSCode R Debugger dependency. Install the latest release version from GitHub without using GitHub API.
# See https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-dev-containers/issues/1032
RUN export TAG=$(git ls-remote --tags --refs --sort='version:refname' https://github.com/ManuelHentschel/vscDebugger v\* | tail -n 1 | cut --delimiter='/' --fields=3) \
    && Rscript -e "remotes::install_git('https://github.com/ManuelHentschel/vscDebugger.git', ref = '"${TAG}"', dependencies = FALSE)"

# R Session watcher settings.
# See more details: https://github.com/REditorSupport/vscode-R/wiki/R-Session-watcher
RUN echo 'source(file.path(Sys.getenv("HOME"), ".vscode-R", "init.R"))' >> ${R_HOME}/etc/Rprofile.site

# [Optional] Uncomment this section to install additional OS packages.
# RUN apt-get update \
#     && export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive \
#     && apt-get -y install --no-install-recommends <your-package-list-here>

Settings

From devcontainer.json: 

"settings": {
    "r.rterm.linux": "/usr/local/bin/radian",
    "r.bracketedPaste": true,
    "r.plot.useHttpgd": true,
    "[r]": {
        "editor.defaultFormatter": "Ikuyadeu.r",
        "editor.formatOnSave": true,
        "editor.wordSeparators": "`~!@#%$^&*()-=+[{]}\\|;:'\",<>/?"
    },
    "[rmd]": {
        "editor.defaultFormatter": "Ikuyadeu.r",
        "editor.formatOnSave": true
    },
    "C_Cpp.commentContinuationPatterns": [
        "/**",
        "//'"
    ],
    "path-autocomplete.pathMappings": {
        "/": "/",
        "./": "${folder}"
    }
},

Extensions

From devcontainer.json:

"extensions": [
    "ikuyadeu.r",
    "rdebugger.r-debugger",
    "christian-kohler.path-intellisense",
    "ionutvmi.path-autocomplete",
    "esbenp.prettier-vscode",
    "Mohamed-El-Fodil-Ihaddaden.shinysnip",
    "ms-vscode.cpptools",
    "usernamehw.errorlens",
    "ms-vscode.live-server"
],

Installations

Initially only the following R Packages are installed with the devcontainer:

  • devtools
  • languageserver
  • httpgd
  • rstudioapi
  • tidyverse

Additionally, the Dockerfile runs the script: common-debian.sh to install system packages and other dependencies.

Notes

Table of Contents auto-generated thanks to DocToc
CHANGELOG.md auto-generated thanks to git-cliff

Jimmy Briggs | 2022

Backlinks:

list from [[R - VSCode devcontainer]] AND -"Changelog"