Developing R scripts in RStudio

You can use pixi to manage your R dependencies. The conda-forge channel contains a wide range of R packages that can be installed using pixi.

Installing R packages

R packages are usually prefixed with r- in the conda-forge channel. To install an R package, you can use the following command:

pixi add r-<package-name>
# for example
pixi add r-ggplot2

Using R packages in RStudio

To use the R packages installed by pixi in RStudio, you need to run rstudio from an activated environment. This can be achieved by running RStudio from pixi shell or from a task in the pixi.toml file.

Full example

The full example can be found here: RStudio example. Here is an example of a pixi.toml file that sets up an RStudio task:

[project]
name = "r"
channels = ["conda-forge"]
platforms = ["linux-64", "osx-64", "osx-arm64"]

[target.linux.tasks]
rstudio = "rstudio"

[target.osx.tasks]
rstudio = "open -a rstudio"
# or alternatively with the full path:
# rstudio = "/Applications/RStudio.app/Contents/MacOS/RStudio"

[dependencies]
r = ">=4.3,<5"
r-ggplot2 = ">=3.5.0,<3.6"

Once RStudio has loaded, you can execute the following R code that uses the ggplot2 package:

# Load the ggplot2 package
library(ggplot2)

# Load the built-in 'mtcars' dataset
data <- mtcars

# Create a scatterplot of 'mpg' vs 'wt'
ggplot(data, aes(x = wt, y = mpg)) +
  geom_point() +
  labs(x = "Weight (1000 lbs)", y = "Miles per Gallon") +
  ggtitle("Fuel Efficiency vs. Weight")

Note

This example assumes that you have installed RStudio system-wide. We are working on updating RStudio as well as the R interpreter builds on Windows for maximum compatibility with pixi.