Any ideas on how to get a Shiny App to use Packrat?

[Andrew Stewart]

I have a Shiny app with some package dependencies I was hoping to resolve via packrat (nothing too complicated here, just ggplo2; I just want to see how well this works).  I created the Shiny app within RStudio and opted to use Packrat with it, and then export the entire directory to a VM with a vanilla Shiny Server installation.  I was hoping that when the app was run it would detect packrat in the directory, but this does not seem to be the case. 

Any tips?  Is this not possible?

[Joe Cheng]

Can you try ssh-ing into the VM, going to the Shiny app directory, and starting R from there? I believe it should restore the packrat library automatically, but if not, try running packrat::restore().

On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 11:00 AM, Andrew Stewart <andrew.c...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have a Shiny app with some package dependencies I was hoping to resolve via packrat (nothing too complicated here, just ggplo2; I just want to see how well this works).  I created the Shiny app within RStudio and opted to use Packrat with it, and then export the entire directory to a VM with a vanilla Shiny Server installation.  I was hoping that when the app was run it would detect packrat in the directory, but this does not seem to be the case. 

Any tips?  Is this not possible?

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[Andrew Stewart]

(sorry if this is a re-post, it didn't look like my original reply sent)

Thanks Joe.

So the trick here is that I’m trying to do this completely non-interactively.  I want to script the whole deployment without any need to manually SSH in or start R (in interactive mode at least).

A little more background: I’m devising a way to very rapidly bundle and deploy self-sufficient Shiny apps within Docker containers.

Can I just untar the bundle in the App dir?  Or is the R process from Shiny not going to register packrat inside the App’s directory (since the R process presumably is executed outside of that dir)?

[Joe Cheng]

Can you just include in the Dockerfile the command to do the packrat restore--either as RUN or ONBUILD?

[Andrew Stewart]

I believe so, but I’m unsure how to kickoff the restore from the command line.  I suppose I could do something along the lines of 

RUN Rbuild -e ‘packrat::restore()’ 

but im not sure that would trigger the bootstrap process?

[Kevin Ushey]

Assuming the R session is started within the same directory that the
project lives, that call should be able to restore successfully.
Alternatively, you can pass the project directory to the
`packrat::restore()` call, and that should be sufficient to rebuild
the project's private library (assuming it can find the
`packrat/packrat.lock` file)

You might instead want to use `packrat::init(project = "...")`, to
ensure the associated `.Rprofile` is also automagically generated (so
that R sessions started in that directory automatically use Packrat;
but note that this won't be the case if you launch R with e.g. `R
--vanilla`).

If you want to start an R session (shiny application) for a
packrat-powered project, you'll need to either:

1. Start the R session from the project directory with the
autoloader in the `.Rprofile` available, or
2. Start the R session, call `packrat::on(<projectDir>)`, and then
launch the application, or
3. Simply start R with the appropriate library path set on the
command line, e.g. `R_LIBS_USER=<privatePackratLibrary> R` -- assuming
you've already asked packrat to rebuild the private library with
`packrat::restore()`.

Hope this helps,
Kevin



On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 1:55 PM, Andrew Stewart

[Andrew Stewart]

Thanks Joe.

So the trick here is that I’m trying to do this completely non-interactively.  I want to script the whole deployment without any need to manually SSH in or start R (in interactive mode at least).

A little more background: I’m devising a way to very rapidly bundle and deploy self-sufficient Shiny apps within Docker containers.

Can I just untar the bundle in the App dir?  Or is the R process from Shiny not going to register packrat inside the App’s directory (since the R process presumably is executed outside of that dir)?

[Andrew Stewart]

Great.  Thanks everyone.  I got this to work now.  Within the app directory under /srv/shiny-server I just copy the packrat bundle and then run the following empty R script to kick off the packrat bootstrap:  Rscript setup.R --bootstrap-packrat 

Doing so, I can bundle an entire Shiny app for deployment into a Docker container.  Very cool!

[Doug Hayes]

Hi Andrew,

I am looking to do something similar and this sounds promising.  Do you have an example Dockerfile or example project on github somewhere so we can all take a look at your implementation? 

Thanks!