Why is it sufficient to just commit renv.lock?

[wlandau]

I have a project that uses renv inside GitHub Actions as described here. For the bookdown Actions example, which uses renv, I see:

You will need to run renv::snapshot() locally and commit the renv.lock file before using this workflow...

Why is renv.lock sufficient? Why am I allowed to omit .Rprofile and renv/activate.R? As expected, when I delete .Rprofile locally, the renv library does not load. So then why do GitHub Actions workflows like this one complete without error?

[jimhester]

Because the renv package bootstraps itself if the library is not setup yet. e.g. delete both .Rprofile and renv from your project and then run install.packages("renv"); renv::restore() on it.

[wlandau]

It did not occur to me that renv::restore() would ever write to the global package library. I always assumed the library had to be renv/library/. Makes sense now why no .Rprofile is needed. This is super useful!