How to use pak & renv together

[telegott]

I have a project that should be deployed as a docker container, that means:

• I need an isolated library for development
• I need a way to fix package versions that I use during development
• Exactly these versions should install in the container, if possible from a plain lockfile, without recreating any isolated environment
• The package installation in the container should be fast.

I do not want to follow the R package structure, since I want to use box and nested modules.
renv is not exactly speedy, which is why I wanted to try pak. However, if I'm correct, pak does not setup a per-project library like renv does.

Using pak only in the container is not possible either, since it can't install from renv.lock.

I was wondering whether it's possible to use both together:

• renv::init(bare=TRUE) to set up the project library
• install pak
• add a package to DESCRIPTION
• do pak::lockfile_create() to snapshot the package mentioned in DESCRIPTION and their exact versions
• copy that lockfile to the container, and to pak::lockfile_install() in the container

What would be the recommended approach to have something similar to poetry, a file that describes the project dependencies, an isolated library, a lockfile, and as bare-bones as possible recreation in an isolated environment like docker?

[gaborcsardi]

There is no current recommended approach to use pak and renv together, you are a pioneer here, for better or worse.

pak will potentially be able to install packages from an renv lockfile: #343. I guess that would solve most (all?) of your problems.

[telegott]

@gaborcsardi thanks for your answer! So I get it right that pak can't replace renv in terms of local development per-project library isolation?

[gaborcsardi]

Not currently, no. pak does not do anything with libraries currently. It installs into the first library on .libPaths() by default. So if you set up your libraries manually or with another tool, then pak will happily use the default library.

[telegott]

@gaborcsardi thanks, will look into this!

[gaborcsardi]

renv now supports pak for installing packages, so I am going to close this.