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Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

rix 0.6.0 (2024-02-02)

New features

  • with_nix(): evaluate and return R functions or shell commands in Nix env:
    • added nix_file argument as alternative to project_path. Specify *.nix fle defining the Nix software environment in which you want to run expr.
    • macOS: made it compatible with system’s RStudio version on macOS, where the R session can not (yet) be started from a shell when launched from Dock. Now /nix/var/nix/profiles/default/bin is added to the PATH variable while with_nix() are called.
  • nix_build() – invoke nix-build from R:
    • macOS: made it compatible with system’s RStudio version on macOS, where the R session can not (yet) be started from a shell when launched from Dock. Now /nix/var/nix/profiles/default/bin is added to the PATH variable while with_nix() are called.
  • rix_init() – create an isolated, project-specific, and runtime-pure R setup via Nix
    • added nix_file argument to specify a specific .nix file

User facing changes

  • rix() – Generate a Nix expressions that build reproducible development environments:
    • shell_hook = NULL becomes the new default; before it was = "R --vanilla". The new default ensures that with_nix() applied on a specific project_path directory containing a custom .Rprofile file that was generated with rix_init(), together with a default.nix expression file, can read that profile file to effectively enforce run-time pure R libraries (only from Nix store).

Bug fixes

  • nix_build() – invoke nix-build from R:
    • avoided empty file artefact when checking for presence of nix-build binary. The internal helper now uses Sys.which("nix-build") for checking availability on PATH in the R session.
    • added another guardrail for run-time purity of Nixpkgs R by removing the R_LIBS_USER path from .libPaths().
  • with_nix() – evaluate and return R functions or shell commands in Nix env:
    • Now cleans all itermediary and output artefacts (files) written in Nix shell (nix-shell) session environment when exiting. These file artefacts are now written in a subdirectory with_nix under tempdir() of the current R session and all files are deleted. Now, when an expr errors in a Nix shell evaluation (i.e. custom R function), but had a previous successful run with a different expr and/or R global environment state with success and _out.Rds produced, the current session fails to bring this output into the current R session.
    • The code run the Nix-R session defined by project_path, now attemps to record sessionInfo() with try. We found failures of that command under older R versions on Nixpkgs for macOS (i.e., aarch64-darwin).
    • Fix segmentation faults in tests by temporarily setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
    • Patched the import of glibcLocalesUtf8 with gibcLocales (imports all locales). This was necessary to support Nixpkgs R versions <= 4.2.0, where glibcLocalsUtf8 derivation was not yet available. We do not sacrifice reproducibility but rather have larger total sizes of derivations involved in the subshell (around 200MB extra).

Quality and unit testing

  • added test suite of 17 unit tests using {testthat}
  • Add GitHub actions runners on the repository that use system’s R or Nix R environments configured with Nix.

Internal refactoring

  • nix_build(): consistently separate cmd and args for nix-build system

rix 0.5.1.9000 (2024-01-17)

  • Added rix::init() to initialize and maintain an isolated, project-specific, and pure R setup via Nix. It accomplishes this by writing a custom .Rprofile that guarantees R packages can only be attached from Nix paths, preventing unnoticed loading from the system’s R user library (R_LIBS_USER and ensuring runtime purity regarding packages and linked libraries). Additionally, it appends /nix/var/nix/profiles/default/bin to the PATH. Currently, this modification only takes effect in the current R session and not in new R sessions for RStudio on MacOS. This is because the default R session is not started from a shell. The PATH will be modified by RStudio when starting the R session, effectively after loading the local .Rprofile. Future versions of RStudio will hopefully respect all environmental variables from a shell environment.

rix 0.5.1 (2024-01-16)

Bug fixes

  • rix::rix(): patch for nixpkgs revisions corresponding to R (r_ver) <= 4.2.0; nix-build failed because attribute glibcLocalesUtf8 was not found. Fixed by importing gibcLocales. Thanks @motorlearner for reporting.

rix 0.5.0 (2024-01-07)

Features

  • Added with_nix(), which can evaluate a function in R or shell command via nix-shell environment, and return the output into the current R session. This works for both evaluating R code from a nix-R session within an other nix-R session, or also from a host R session (i.e., on macOS or linux) within a specific nix-R session. This feature is useful to test dependencies and specific setups of software in controlled environments.

  • Added tar_nix_ga(), a function to run targets pipelines on Github Actions using a Nix expression.

rix 0.4.1 (2023-10-06)

Bug fixes

  • rix::rix(): fix missing pkgs.mkShell when shell_hook = NULL. Both shell_hook = "" and shell_hook = NULL are now producing valid nix expressions.

rix 0.4.0 (2023-09-26)

Features

  • rix::rix() now defaults to "en_US.UTF-8" for the relevant locale variables (LANG, LC_ALL, LC_TIME, LC_MONETARY, LC_PAPER, LC_MEASUREMENT) and sets these environment variables in the Nix shell. These will be correctly propagated into the Nix R session. Users can modify the locale setting via options(rix.nix_locale_variables = list(LANG = "de_CH.UTF-8", <...>), e.g., but it needs to be an UTF-8 locale. This is because we only import the glibcLocalesUtf8 subset, to not keep the size reasonable.

Bug fixes

  • fix locale warnings when starting R in linux, which uses glibc (closes #50). Now, we use glibcLocalesUtf8 from Nix for “x86_64-linux”.

rix 0.3.1 (2023-09-11)

Chore

  • Remove boilerplate code for rix::rix(tex_pkgs = NULL)

rix 0.3.0 (2023-09-10)

  • Added support for installing TeX Live packages via new rix::rix() argument tex_pkgs.

Chore

  • update inst/extdata/default.nix so that it installs {rix} v0.3.0.

rix 0.2.1.9002 (2023-09-02)

  • nix_build() now supports --max_jobs flag of nix-build via options(rix.nix_build_max_jobs = <integer>). Custom settings of this option can be useful for leveraging full I/O latency or efficient builds on shared memory multiprocessing systems.

rix 0.2.1.9001 (2023-08-29)

rix 0.2.1.9000 (2023-08-29)

Chore

  • Fix internal create_default_nix() so that project_path is directory name.
  • Updated inst/extdata/default.nix to latest commit of {rix} prior bumping.

rix 0.2.1 (2023-08-26)

Bug fixes

  • Patch rix() to allow empty r_pkgs (##67).
  • Patch rix() to do bug-free calling of rix_build() within default nix shell.

Chore

  • New internal helper create_default_nix() to bootstrap ./inst/extdata/default.nix

rix 0.2.0 (2023-08-25)

New features

  • Updated Nix historical revision data to include R version 4.3.1.
  • Provision a new shell_hook arg for rix::rix(), which will create a shellHook entry in default.nix.

Bug fixes

  • inst/extdata/default.nix: use R --vanilla in shellHook to not propagate user-specific .Renviron and .Rprofile. Fixes #56

rix 0.1.2 (2023-08-14)

Bug fixes

  • Patch inst/exdata/default.nix so that LOCALE_ARCHIVE shellHook that was set to glibc locale does not fail on MacOS anymore (#40; fixed with 37f7ab8).
  • nix_build(): fix defensive check so the error message is referring to project_path instead of nix_file. The patch does not change correct behavior of nix_build(), hence it is only of cosmetic nature.

rix 0.1.1 (2023-08-11)

Bug fixes

rix 0.1.0 (2023-08-11)

New features

  • Added nix_build() helper that runs nix-build interactively from R. (#22)
  • rix() now supports installing packages from GitHub and the CRAN archives.
  • rix() now supports using a nixpkgs revision instead of an R version for reproducibility
  • Generated default.nix files now also include the call that was made to generate them as top-level comment.

Changes

  • The path argument of rix() changed to project_path.

rix (development version)

  • Basic functionality added.