renv::restore() is not reliable on Windows; calls make and other Linux utilities

[juliusmoore]

We want to use renv on Windows, but have encountered an issue running renv::restore() on the lockfile generated by migrating from packrat. Specifically, renv::restore() fails because 1: It asks for things like make and g++ on Windows machines, without installing these dependencies itself.

I've worked around this problem by using renv::init() instead, however we need to be able to rely on renv::restore() because we don't want the packages to update when we reproduce old run throughs of code. This was only an option because I was working on a new run through.

Occurs: Running renv::restore() on the new lockfile after migrating from packrat to renv.
renv::restore() does not work for restoring some libraries on windows machines. Specifically the sys library, from the renv.lock file

"sys": {
      "Package": "sys",
      "Version": "3.3",
      "Source": "CRAN"
    }
R version, from the lockfile:
"R": {
    "Version": "3.6.2",
    "Repositories": [
      {
        "Name": "CRAN",
        "URL": "https://cran.rstudio.com"
      }
    ]
  },

R version on my machine: 4.3.1 (From R console)

> version
               _                                
platform       x86_64-w64-mingw32               
arch           x86_64                           
os             mingw32                          
crt            ucrt                             
system         x86_64, mingw32                  
status                                          
major          4                                
minor          3.1                              
year           2023                             
month          06                               
day            16                               
svn rev        84548                            
language       R                                
version.string R version 4.3.1 (2023-06-16 ucrt)
nickname       Beagle Scouts

Running on Windows 11, 64-bit

The issue was isolated by calling renv::restore(packages=“sys”)

The error persists after installing make and adding it to the path. It can be isolated to renv::restore(packages=“sys”).

The error does not occur when renv::init() is called, and option 2 is chosen.

> renv::init()
This project already has a lockfile. What would you like to do? 

1: Restore the project from the lockfile.
2: Discard the lockfile and re-initialize the project.
3: Activate the project without snapshotting or installing any packages.
4: Abort project initialization.

Selection: 2

[remlapmot]

Maybe this helps you - on Windows you need the corresponding version of Rtools installed for a particular version of R. See https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/Rtools/

[kevinushey]

renv also has some tooling for installing Rtools on the users behalf via renv::equip(), but I don't think this has been updated for R 4.4.0 yet.