Completely uninstall RStudio for clean Reinstall

michaelchirico · September 18, 2018, 4:59pm

This comes at my wit's end from this bug which has rendered RStudio completely unusable for my purposes on my machine:

github.com/rstudio/rstudio

RStudio crashing from rJava error

opened 03:08AM - 17 Sep 18 UTC

closed 10:18PM - 22 Feb 21 UTC

MichaelChirico

bug stale

The following consistently crashes my RStudio: ``` library(rJava) .jinit() … ``` When I run on the command line, its' fine: ``` > R R> library(rJava) R> .jinit() ``` My environment: ``` R version 3.5.1 (2018-07-02) Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin15.6.0 (64-bit) Running under: macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 Matrix products: default BLAS: /System/Library/Frameworks/Accelerate.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/vecLib.framework/Versions/A/libBLAS.dylib LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.5/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib locale: [1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8 attached base packages: [1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base other attached packages: [1] rJava_0.9-10 loaded via a namespace (and not attached): [1] compiler_3.5.1 tools_3.5.1 yaml_2.2.0 ``` My command line environment: ``` R version 3.5.1 (2018-07-02) Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin15.6.0 (64-bit) Running under: macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 Matrix products: default BLAS: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.5/Resources/lib/libRblas.0.dylib LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.5/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib locale: [1] C/UTF-8/C/C/C/C attached base packages: [1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base other attached packages: [1] rJava_0.9-10 loaded via a namespace (and not attached): [1] compiler_3.5.1 ```

Suspecting there might be some cache issue at play (i.e. along the lines of Part II of my ongoing rJava + 3.5.1 nightmare), I decided to try a clean re-install of RStudio.

Not really knowing how to uninstall things on Mac, I dragged RStudio to the Trash can & ran rm -rf .rstudio and rm -rf .rstudio-desktop to be sure I'm rid of everything.

Nevertheless, some files appear to have been retained.

Upon reinstall, I examined .rstudio-desktop/history_database and quickly recognized some commands from before uninstallation. Here's that with more intention:

tail -n 5 ~/.rstudio-desktop/history_database 
1537289065265:list.files('.rstudio-desktop', recursive = TRUE, full.names = TRUE, all.files = TRUE)
1537289078899:file.info(list.files('.rstudio-desktop', recursive = TRUE, full.names = TRUE, all.files = TRUE))
1537289097258:x = file.info(list.files('.rstudio-desktop', recursive = TRUE, full.names = TRUE, all.files = TRUE))
1537289105417:x[x$size > 0, ]
1537289643670:print('pre-uninstall')

Then uninstall RStudio as above (& Empty Trash to be sure), and re-install from the .dmg and lo and behold:

tail -n 5 ~/.rstudio-desktop/history_database 
0:file.info(list.files('.rstudio-desktop', recursive = TRUE, full.names = TRUE, all.files = TRUE))
0:x = file.info(list.files('.rstudio-desktop', recursive = TRUE, full.names = TRUE, all.files = TRUE))
0:x[x$size > 0, ]
0:print('pre-uninstall')
1537289893165:print('post-re-install')

So, obviously the attempt to uninstall was a failure. I'm noticing now that the timestamps for the old commands have reset, at least, somehow...

How can I completely wipe RStudio from my machine?

kevinushey · September 18, 2018, 5:59pm

On macOS, there are also some application-specific caches in the ~/Library/Caches folder; at least on my machine I see org.rstudio.RStudio and RStudio folders. You could try removing those as well.

All of the application state managed explicitly by RStudio is indeed stored within the ~/.rstudio-desktop folder, though -- removing that and RStudio should be enough to clear out its state.

michaelchirico · September 19, 2018, 3:58am

Hmm, removing the things found by ls /Library/Caches | grep "R" didn't seem to make a difference... history_database still retains the old commands

ClemHarvey · August 19, 2019, 4:14am

Here is one minor suggestion. Prior to the removal of RStudio 0.98.507, you should first log into your Mac with an administrator account, and turn RStudio 0.98.507 off if it is running. Also give a try to uninstall R studio from Anaconda control panel by following this guide.