Containerized R Development Environment

This GIT repo is a git template that provides a containered R Development environment. If you want to start a new R development git project, starts your git repo from this template and you can easily define the development environment.

Properties

This templates allows you to:

• Do your R development in VSCode
• Define the R packages that need to be available as part of the development environment. You can do this by setting the RPACKAGES property (in the .devcontainer/.env file).
• Switch between a development environment with or without RStudio
• Git works both within the development container as outside of the container.

Benefits

Using a containerized R Development:

• allows you to work together with other developers on the same project, ensuring that you all have the same development environment
• allows you to easily define a development context which matches the production setting
• allows you to define separate development contexts for different r projects

Usage

After creating a git repo from this template, one must first define which R packages should be available by default in the development environment (you can always install new ones afterwards from within the environment). By default, the packages 'tidyverse' and 'bupaverse' are pre-installed.

Next, you have to decide whether you would like to develop in VSCode or in RStudio. To do so, make sure you uncomment the correct service in devcontainer.json

If you do your development in VSCode, you can use the Fish shell for your regular terminal or the R terminal for working R. Use the workspace folder for your R code.

Alternatively, you could also select RStudio as your development environment. For this you have to change the selection in devcontainer.json and start the container.

Once you have started the RStudio version, you can access an RStudio environment through your browser at 127.0.0.1:8686. Login is your local username. The password is rstudio.

Once you are done, you can leave the development container and all your work is accessible in the workspace folder locally (on your local environment, not within the container).