global.R in Shiny application

[SowmyaM]

HI Guys,

I'm developing Rshiny application and I'm using global.R file for package initialisation and for few other globally shared objects. i have deployed the application in shiny server and everything was working fine.

Recently R version got updated in my server. After that all the applications were down because of packages issue. But My shiny application was up and running without any issues. The only difference i can see is I'm using global.R, the same is not available in other applications. Also i wanted to mention, due to R version update, we have uninstalled few unused packages. That package reference was also there in my global.R.

Wondering how my application works even after few packages were not available in the server.

Can anyone help me to understand the Role of global.R.

[joseluizferreira]

I am not familiar with shiny server and I think it'll be very difficult for someone to answer the first part of your question without the different codes you've mentioned. It does look suspicious thought that your application can still run even without having the packages needed installed, but I guess there are several things that could explain that. Could you share some of the code?

The role of global AFAIK is roughly what you mentioned on the top: load packages and objects that can be shared across sessions, between ui/server and/or modules. But, again, if shiny server is somehow different, then I can't say.