RStudio Cloud has been an amazing resource for my classes. I used it all last year and it has been a lifesaver. However, this year, I seem to be running into some package installation issues.
I setup my project for students. I install all packages that are needed. I set it up as an assignment. Students click on the assignment, and the packages I install are not there.
Also, I created a new base template for my group, but new projects I add do not seem to be using that template.
Has anyone else run into this issue? Any solution suggestions?
Thanks for the feedback and we're happy you are enjoying the service! Could you please provide some more details about the issues you are experiencing? In particular: when you install packages into your project can you confirm they being installed into the /home/rstudio-user/R directory and the files you would like included are in /cloud/project? If you are able to share the url for one of the projects that would be helpful as well. Feel free to direct message me if you have specifics you prefer not to share publicly.
I think I discovered exactly what the issue is. My base template is using R version 3.5.3, but new projects defaulted to R version 3.6.0. Consequently, packages weren't there.
Once I changed the R version I was running to 3.5.3 (or installed packages under 3.6.0), that has taken care of the issue.
When students click on an assignment, does it copy the current R version over to their assignment, or will it always default to the newest installation (so installed packages won't show up without them changing to the older version)?
I passed this question along to our team and the current behavior for projects is that copies will use the R version from the parent assignment as long as the .Rproj file is present when the copy is created.
There is a known issue where if the name of the project is changed while the project is being created this file may fail to be copied. We are working on a fix for this but if all copies of your project are consistently experiencing this problem it may be an issue with your .Rproj file. I hope that information helps. Please let us know if you continue to have issues and we are happy to investigate further.