rix Generates a Nix expression that builds a reproducible development environment

Usage

rix(
  r_ver = "latest",
  r_pkgs = NULL,
  system_pkgs = NULL,
  git_pkgs = NULL,
  tex_pkgs = NULL,
  ide = c("other", "code", "radian", "rstudio", "rserver"),
  project_path = ".",
  overwrite = FALSE,
  print = FALSE,
  shell_hook = NULL
)

Arguments

r_ver: Character, defaults to "latest". The required R version, for example "4.0.0". You can check which R versions are available using available_r. For reproducibility purposes, you can also provide a nixpkgs revision directly.
r_pkgs: Vector of characters. List the required R packages for your analysis here.
system_pkgs: Vector of characters. List further software you wish to install that are not R packages such as command line applications for example. You can look for available software on the NixOS website https://search.nixos.org/packages?channel=unstable&from=0&size=50&sort=relevance&type=packages&query=
git_pkgs: List. A list of packages to install from Git. See details for more information.
tex_pkgs: Vector of characters. A set of tex packages to install. Use this if you need to compile .tex documents, or build PDF documents using Quarto. If you don't know which package to add, start by adding "amsmath". See the Vignette "Authoring LaTeX documents" for more details.
ide: Character, defaults to "other". If you wish to use RStudio to work interactively use "rstudio" or "rserver" for the server version. Use "code" for Visual Studio Code. You can also use "radian", an interactive REPL. For other editors, use "other". This has been tested with RStudio, VS Code and Emacs. If other editors don't work, please open an issue.
project_path: Character, defaults to the current working directory. Where to write default.nix, for example "/home/path/to/project". The file will thus be written to the file "/home/path/to/project/default.nix".
overwrite: Logical, defaults to FALSE. If TRUE, overwrite the default.nix file in the specified path.
print: Logical, defaults to FALSE. If TRUE, print default.nix to console.
shell_hook: Character of length 1, defaults to NULL. Commands added to the shellHook variable executed when the Nix shell starts. So by default, using nix-shell default.nix (or path with shell.nix) will start a specific program, possibly with flags (separated by space), and/or do shell actions. You can for example use shell_hook = R, if you want to directly enter the declared Nix R session.

Value

Nothing, this function only has the side-effect of writing a file called "default.nix" in the working directory. This file contains the expression to build a reproducible environment using the Nix package manager.

Details

This function will write a default.nix in the chosen path. Using the Nix package manager, it is then possible to build a reproducible development environment using the nix-build command in the path. This environment will contain the chosen version of R and packages, and will not interfere with any other installed version (via Nix or not) on your machine. Every dependency, including both R package dependencies but also system dependencies like compilers will get installed as well in that environment. If you use RStudio for interactive work, then set the rstudio parameter to TRUE. If you use another IDE (for example Emacs or Visual Studio Code), you do not need to add it to the default.nix file, you can simply use the version that is installed on your computer. Once you built the environment using nix-build, you can drop into an interactive session using nix-shell. See the "Building reproducible development environments with rix" vignette for detailled instructions. Packages to install from Github must be provided in a list of 4 elements: "package_name", "repo_url", "branch_name" and "commit". This argument can also be a list of lists of these 4 elements. It is also possible to install old versions of packages by specifying a version. For example, to install the latest version of {AER} but an old version of {ggplot2}, you could write: r_pkgs = c("AER", "ggplot2@2.2.1"). Note however that doing this could result in dependency hell, because an older version of a package might need older versions of its dependencies, but other packages might need more recent versions of the same dependencies. If instead you want to use an environment as it would have looked at the time of {ggplot2}'s version 2.2.1 release, then use the Nix revision closest to that date, by setting r_ver = "3.1.0", which was the version of R current at the time. This ensures that Nix builds a completely coherent environment. By default, the nix shell will be configured with "en_US.UTF-8" for the relevant locale variables (LANG, LC_ALL, LC_TIME, LC_MONETARY, LC_PAPER, LC_MEASUREMENT). This is done to ensure locale reproducibility by default in Nix environments created with rix(). If there are good reasons to not stick to the default, you can set your preferred locale variables via options(rix.nix_locale_variables = list(LANG = "de_CH.UTF-8", <...>) and the aforementioned locale variable names.

Examples

if (FALSE) {
# Build an environment with the latest version of R
# and the dplyr and ggplot2 packages
rix(r_ver = "latest",
    r_pkgs = c("dplyr", "ggplot2"),
    system_pkgs = NULL,
    git_pkgs = NULL,
    ide = "code",
    project_path = path_default_nix,
    overwrite = TRUE,
    print = TRUE,
    shell_hook = NULL)
}