Problems using RStudio on the cloud

I'm trying out RStudio on the cloud. I am looking at RStudio on AWS and RStudio Cloud.

  1. I set up RStudio on AWS and it looks great, and I installed tidyverse ok, linked it to Dropbox, but I can't install devtools so I can get my package from Github.
ERROR: dependency ‘gh’ is not available for package ‘usethis’
* removing ‘/home/rstudio/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.6/usethis’
Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘usethis’ had non-zero exit status
ERROR: dependency ‘usethis’ is not available for package ‘devtools’
* removing ‘/home/rstudio/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.6/devtools’
Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘devtools’ had non-zero exit status

The downloaded source packages are in
	‘/tmp/Rtmp4RRQzL/downloaded_packages’
  1. I also set up RStudio Cloud, and I got devtools and my Gtihub package installed, but I can't install dplyr.
g++: internal compiler error: Killed (program cc1plus)
Please submit a full bug report,
with preprocessed source if appropriate.
See <file:///usr/share/doc/gcc-5/README.Bugs> for instructions.
make: *** [mutate.o] Error 4
/opt/R/3.6.0/lib/R/etc/Makeconf:176: recipe for target 'mutate.o' failed
ERROR: compilation failed for package ‘dplyr’
* removing ‘/home/rstudio-user/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.6/dplyr’
Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘dplyr’ had non-zero exit status

The downloaded source packages are in
	‘/tmp/RtmpbxeAhR/downloaded_packages’

For the AWS option, can you show the core problem? what happens when you try to install gh? I also use RStudio Server on an AWS EC2 instance (Ubuntu 18 AMI) and I can install devtools without any issues.

For the RStudio Cloud issue, this is happening because dplyr requires more than 1 GB to build (The current RAM limit), to overcome this, they cache pre-compiled versions of the packages but there is a lag between the release of a new version and the cache so you just have to wait a few days for the cache version to be available or maybe install and older version although I'm not sure if older versions get installed from the cache.

1 Like

I managed to install the devtools version of dplyr, so that's working now. Thanks.

Comparing RStudio Cloud with AWS EC2, what are the pros and cons?

  • Cloud manages your projects for you, file access is a bit awkward, maybe has memory limits.

  • AWS EC2 only opens one project at a time, login seems very fiddly, size and speed could be greater? interface is a little more spacious, file access easy via Dropbox. Maybe it's not possible to have a persistent state?

Well, the main pro for AWS is that you have total control over the server which means that you are not going to have problems installing system dependencies, whereas with RStudio Cloud you don't have administrative access to the server.

Also, by having control over the server you can install other tools on the same virtual machine that usually play well together like Shiny Server, a SQL server, Nginx, LibreOffice, Tex Live, etc.

The con is that you have to install, configure and maintain all this by yourself.

1 Like

The devtools installation error is attached.
gherror.pdf (241.0 KB)

Now I get a shorter error. So it installed some of the devtools dependencies. Just gh and usethis failed.

Restarting R session...

> install.packages("devtools")
Installing package into ‘/home/rstudio/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.6’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
also installing the dependencies ‘gh’, ‘usethis’

trying URL 'https://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/gh_1.1.0.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 29043 bytes (28 KB)
==================================================
downloaded 28 KB

trying URL 'https://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/usethis_1.5.1.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 620225 bytes (605 KB)
==================================================
downloaded 605 KB

trying URL 'https://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/devtools_2.2.1.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 372273 bytes (363 KB)
==================================================
downloaded 363 KB

* installing *source* package ‘gh’ ...
** package ‘gh’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
** using staged installation
** R
** byte-compile and prepare package for lazy loading
Error: object ‘cli_alert_info’ is not exported by 'namespace:cli'
Execution halted
ERROR: lazy loading failed for package ‘gh’
* removing ‘/home/rstudio/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.6/gh’
Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘gh’ had non-zero exit status
ERROR: dependency ‘gh’ is not available for package ‘usethis’
* removing ‘/home/rstudio/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.6/usethis’
Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘usethis’ had non-zero exit status
ERROR: dependency ‘usethis’ is not available for package ‘devtools’
* removing ‘/home/rstudio/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.6/devtools’
Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘devtools’ had non-zero exit status

The downloaded source packages are in
	‘/tmp/RtmpU7smcA/downloaded_packages’
>

This is the key part, Can you try installing/reinstalling cli package, and then gh?

install.packages("cli")

cli installed successfully
devtools installed successfully
Now I have a problem where I can't link Drop box, because it says
"You're using an old version of Dropbox. Please download the latest version at www.dropbox.com/downloading"
But I have the latest version and reinstalling didn't help.
Oh I didn't realise I had to unlinkDropbox at the end of each session. Gosh it is super fiddly.
Also it takes ages for Dropbox to appear in the Files pane.

I never liked the "Dropbox integration" workflow, I prefer to use Github for syncing projects and have all my data into a SQL database if possible.

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