CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rconda
shs
shs

Reputation: 3899

Prevent R in conda environment from running `~/.Rprofile`

Problem

I have a conda environment with an R installation. My issue is that the conda R will run ~/.Rprofile during startup. This is breaking the expectation that conda environments are self-contained. Specifically, I am loading packages in my ~/.Rprofile that are not installed in the conda R (I am using require(), so just warnings). The process works the following way:

The first .Rprofile file found on the R startup search path is processed. The search path is (in order): (i) Sys.getenv("R_PROFILE_USER"), (ii) ./.Rprofile, and (iii) ~/.Rprofile. Source: startup package vignette

Goal

Ideally, I would like to alter the third path to a location within the environment directory and somehow do this in the environment yaml during setup, such that I can easily replicate the setup on another device. I realize that this might not work, so a solution that permanently sets R_PROFILE_USER to an environment-specific location would also be appreciated.

Edit:

Since I am using R through rpy2 I don't think I can use the --no-init-file flag.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 476

Answers (2)

shs
shs

Reputation: 3899

I wrote a bash script to solve this issue. Run it in the project directory containing the environment.yml. It prompts for a name of the newly created conda environment, then creates and activates it. Subsequently an empty .Rprofile is created in the environment directory and R_PROFILE_USER is set to this location. Finally, the environment is reactivated for the change to take effect. Thus, any time R is run from this environment, the newly created .Rprofile is used.

It should be noted that an .Rprofile in R_PROFILE_USER takes precedence over an .Rprofile in the project directory. This might lead to confusion if the user wants to create use such a file and is unaware of the setup.

echo What name do you want to give to the conda environment?
read input
conda env create -n $input -f environment.yml
conda activate $input
touch $CONDA_PREFIX/.Rprofile
conda env config vars set R_PROFILE_USER=$CONDA_PREFIX
conda activate $input

Upvotes: 0

Carl Witthoft
Carl Witthoft

Reputation: 21532

Quoting from ?.Rprofile, which invokes the man page for Startup,

unless --no-init-file was given, R searches for a user profile, a file of R code. The path of this file can be specified by the R_PROFILE_USER environment variable (and tilde expansion will be performed). If this is unset, a file called ‘.Rprofile’ is searched for in the current directory or in the user's home directory (in that order). The user profile file is sourced into the workspace.

Upvotes: 2

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