rstudio / rstudio/packrat

RStudio occasionally replaces symlinked directories in lib-R with empty directory

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Dominant language
R
Stars
409
Forks
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Description

This appears to be a pretty severe bug for users of packrat with RStudio on Windows. Repro:

  1. Create a new project,
  2. Initialize with packrat::init(),
  3. Restart the R session.

Periodically, some junction points in the lib-R directory will be replaced with empty directories. It seems like this only happens to a few of the directories, and which directory is affected seems random. You may need to restart the R session a couple times (CTRL + SHIFT + F10) to reproduce. I repro'ed this with the latest daily build of RStudio on Windows.

I can't reproduce using a vanilla R session from the console, even with rapidly toggling packrat::on() and packrat::off(), so it leads me to believe that the IDE is doing something here.

@jjallaire, any thoughts on what could be causing this?

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First steps

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  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reproducing the issue with packrat::init() in a new project on RStudio for Windows, then restart the R session with CTRL + SHIFT + F10 and inspect junction points under lib-R. Compare this with toggling packrat::on() and packrat::off() in a vanilla R console. Done means the relevant lib-R junction points are no longer randomly replaced with empty directories.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
r
Domain
tooling
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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