Installing R and R Studio
You need to install these programs from the Software Center. First install R, then Rstudio.
* R for Windows 4.0.3
* RStudioDesktop 1.2.5019 Gen P0
Alternatively, you can install the latest versions from Chocolately running CMD as admin. (This is what I prefer)
- choco install r -y
- choco install r.studio -y
Setting up Your Folder Hierarchy for R
This is how I set up my scripting folders for R. If yours are different, you may need to adjust your here() function to reflect that in the scripts (for example, if you wanted to work out of your GitHub folder).
RStudio_Heather (This is my working directory and I also keep my .RProj and .RProfile files here)
* figure
* output
* scripts
* source
Setting Working Directory in R Studio
Go to Tools > Global Options > General
* Leave the R version as “Default”
* Set Default Working Directory (when not in a project) to your preferred location
* Un-check Restore .RData into workspace at startup
* Set Save workspace to .RData on exit to “Never”
Setting Dark Mode in R Studio
You can set RStudio to a variety of dark modes by going to Tools > Global Options > Appearance and changing the Editor theme. I use “Pastel on Dark”, but pick what works best for you.
Installing Library Packages
To use the packages in your script’s library call, they must first be installed. In RStudio, you can go to the Packages tab on the right, select Install, type in the name of the package and press Install. Alternatively, you can enter install.packages(package_name) into the console. You might also see a popup message at the top of your script that says dependancies are not installed. If you select Install, all the required packages will be downloaded. Note that some packages aren’t compatible with older versions of R, in which case you will need to either find one that does or update your version of R.
Ease of Use - Packages
Keep your R package library on the same drive as your scripts. For example, having the library in a folder on your home drive (H:) and your scripts in OneDrive (cached to a folder on C:) causes untenable lag caused by trying to connect to the network where your home drive lives. To check this, go to RStudio console and enter .libPaths() and ensure the directory is pointing to a folder on C:, such as C:\Users\
\OneDrive - Government of BC\R\win-library\4.2 or C:\Program Files\R\R-4.2\library or similar. You can get R Studio to change this setting by creating a file called .RProfile in the root folder of your working directory and putting this information inside it: .libPaths(“C:\Users\\OneDrive - Government of BC\Documents\R\win-library\4.2”)
Running in VS Code
If you choose to run this script in VS Code instead of RStudio, you will need to install R Extension for Visual Studio Code by Yuki Ueda.
You’ll also want to set the system environment in VS Code with this line: Sys.setenv(RSTUDIO_PANDOC=“C:/Program Files/RStudio/bin/”)
You can find the correct directory by typing Sys.getenv(“RSTUDIO_PANDOC”) into the console
Preferences
I prefer to create new R files with R Markdown (.Rmd) because it allows me to write code in “chunks”. This way, I can run my chunks as I go along to make sure I’m getting the desired outcome, without having to write the whole script at once.