The next version of RStudio (v0.95) is now available as a preview release. Highlights include:
- Projects — A new system for managing R projects that enables easy switching between working directories, running multiple instances of RStudio with different projects, and per-project contexts for source documents, workspaces, and history.
- Code Navigation — Typeahead navigation by file or function name (Ctrl+.) and the ability to navigate directly to the definition of any function (F2 or Ctrl+Click).
- Version Control — Integrated support for Git and Subversion, including changelist management, diffing/staging, and project history.
Detailed documentation on the new features will be available along with the final release of v0.95, which we expect to make available by the end of January.
We’re also planning on being at the Chicago, Houston, and Los Angeles R User Groups over the next few weeks. We’ll be talking about the new release as well as the general state of the project and where people would like to see us go in the future. Meeting dates are:
- Chicago (Thursday, January 26th)
- Houston (Tuesday, February 7th)
- Los Angeles (Thursday, February 9th)
Thanks in advance to everyone who tries out the preview release (you can download it here). Let us know what works, what doesn’t, and what else you’d like to see us do.
33 comments
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January 10, 2012 at 4:59 pm
swiftsam
Wow, the git integration was the best surprise ever! RStudio was already the bomb-diggity, but you just dominated an entire extra function. Nicely done, and thanks for all the hard work.
January 11, 2012 at 3:00 am
Nikhil Gopal
Great job! I absolutely love RStudio. I can hardly wait to try out this new release.
The only feature I constantly find myself wishing RStudio had is a “debug” feature where I can view variable contents and put in breakpoints. Perhaps you guys can add it to your todo list.
Thanks for putting together this awesome development environment.
January 11, 2012 at 9:31 am
Zach
you guys R awesome. I love RStudio and these improvements will definitely make life more pleasant. For v0.96 I vote for Brew support in the Text Editor.
January 11, 2012 at 10:50 am
AM
Well done, people!
Speaking for myself, I would really love to see code-folding in the editor at some stage.
January 11, 2012 at 1:52 pm
GregR
I’d definitely second the code-folding. Thanks!
January 11, 2012 at 1:54 pm
jjallaire
Yes, we’ve got the message on code-folding and are hoping to add it soon!
J.J.
January 11, 2012 at 10:52 am
Patrick
Awesome! I like the project facility, but would prefer is this also took my designated “statistics” directory into account (as set in the program options) , instead of my home directory.
(Statistics projects usually go in the same base folder as individual scripts and datafiles.)
January 11, 2012 at 2:52 pm
jjallaire
Hi Patrick,
Once you create a project within the “statistics” directory I believe future invocations of New Project will default to that. Are you seeing it work this way on your system?
J.J.
January 11, 2012 at 3:32 pm
Patrick
Ah, yes, it’s seems to be doing that. Great and thanks for the info!
Switching workspaces (opening and closing projects) is a bit slow though; is that because the preview code isn’t yet optimized or will that remain in the release version?
January 11, 2012 at 3:39 pm
jjallaire
Patrick,
Opening and closing projects shouldn’t be any slower than opening a fresh version of RStudio for that directory. Under the hood a new R process is being started, .RData being loaded, etc. So, if you have a large .RData file that would hold things up (you can disable the loading of .RData using Project Options).
J.J.
January 11, 2012 at 1:38 pm
Eric Nord
Sounds even better than 0.94, which is so good. Can’t wait to install and test.
January 11, 2012 at 3:35 pm
Kent Johnson
Sweet! Any chance of Mercurial integration as well?
January 11, 2012 at 3:37 pm
jjallaire
Hi Kent,
We don’t currently have plans for Mercurial integration.
J.J.
January 13, 2012 at 4:18 pm
Berend Hasselman
What a pity. Mercurial is the version control system I use most, need for other projects and prefer.
January 13, 2012 at 10:01 am
Derek
Great to hear! If you are ever down around Atlanta we would love to have you at the Atlanta R User Group.
Keep up the good work!
Derek
January 17, 2012 at 5:01 am
Mark
RStudio is one of those programs that is simply a pleasure to use.
So far no problems with the preview release and enjoying the nice integration with Git.
I use Sweave and the ‘compile PDF’ button regularly – any thoughts on adding greater support for ‘knitr’?
Mark
January 17, 2012 at 8:07 am
jjallaire
Hi Mark,
Yes, adding support for ‘knitr’ is definitely on our radar, hopefully something we’ll do over the next few months.
J.J.
January 21, 2012 at 9:53 am
Yihui
I’m really excited to know this! Thanks a lot!
January 21, 2012 at 2:52 pm
jjallaire
Yihui,
Along with everyone else in the R community we are great admirers of the work you’ve done with knitr. We’ve tried running knitr under RStudio by replacing the .Call(“rs_callSweave”) line in compilePdf with a call to knit. While this obviously works just fine, to properly support knitr we’ll want to make the editor smarter about knitr documents, support html and md files, etc. We’ll get in touch over the next few weeks see what ideas we can come up with together to make things work really great for users.
J.J.
January 17, 2012 at 9:46 am
Sergey
Guys, thank you very much for your tremendous work!
I enjoy using RStudio. My wish for the New Year: debug feature
January 17, 2012 at 8:10 pm
jknowles (@jknowles)
Thank you so much for the hard work guys. RStudio increase my productivity at home and at work, and reduces one big barrier to R adoption. The version control addition will make it easier for even newbies like me to start using Git to collaborate on code with others and contribute to larger projects. Absolutely fantastic work. And the server version makes using R on a remote, more powerful machine drop dead simple with a browser. Thanks!
January 19, 2012 at 7:30 am
Martin
I was searching for a long time to find a program like RStudio. Thank you very much. This helps me to forget Matlab
January 19, 2012 at 8:26 pm
iangow
The support for projects is very nice. Realized that it was a feature I desired only after actually getting it today. (Will have to learn about Git to see what that offers.)
One thought: Would it be possible to have multiple instances of RStudio Server running different projects under the same user? So, for instance, while one project is running away, I could switch to another project in a different browser tab and work on it. I guess I could set up another user on my (de facto) single-user server, but wondering if there is any easier way.
January 21, 2012 at 2:41 pm
jjallaire
Hi there,
Yes, multiple instances for RStudio is something we’d like to do. There is some additional complexity because RStudio Server suspends idle sessions and we need to make sure we properly handle suspend and restore for multiple concurrent projects. Not a showstopper, but we weren’t quite able to sort this out robustly in time for v0.95.
J.J.
January 21, 2012 at 10:45 am
Yihui
I just tried the version control and it was absolutely fantastic! One more step and I will be completely switching from my years of Emacs+ESS to the new RStudio era: as a package developer, I wish a better support to roxygen (now roxygen2), and one of the most useful features of ESS is that when I hit Enter after a line of roxygen comments (with leading ##’ or #’), the next line will start with ##’ (or #’) automatically (i.e. autofilling); besides, I’m able to re-arrange the roxygen comments by M-q which means a block of roxygen comments can be re-wrapped, with long lines split and short lines appended, so that each line is within (about) the limit of 70 characters. I use roxygen heavily in my development, and I will appreciate if you guys can consider this feature.
January 21, 2012 at 2:46 pm
jjallaire
Yihui,
Thanks for the in-depth details on what you’d like to see in terms of roxygen support. This is definitely something that ESS and StatET users have become accustomed to so something we’d like to add to RStudio soon. Once we have a first pass of an implementation we’ll post back here and you and others who might be interested can give it a spin and let us know what refinements are still necessary.
Best,
J.J.
January 21, 2012 at 2:09 pm
Jeremy Leipzig
Big fan of RStudio and RStudio Server. Would love to have someone come talk at PhillyR.
January 21, 2012 at 2:37 pm
jjallaire
Jeremy,
We’d love to come down to Philly to talk to the group — we’ll ping you by email to sort out a good date and time.
J.J.
January 21, 2012 at 2:36 pm
Kevin Goulding
RStudio is great – thanks for all your work. It would be great to see (1) full screen mode for Mac OS X; and (2) a “calculating…” icon to show when R is “thinking”.
Thanks-
January 21, 2012 at 2:39 pm
jjallaire
Hi Keven,
Full screen mode is on our list — we’ve got a few other big things we’re working on so I’m not sure exactly which release it will fall in but we’ll definitely make it happen before v1.0.
For the “calculating…” icon, we do have a stop sign which appears at the right-edge of the console title bar — do you see that when R is running a calculation?
J.J.
January 21, 2012 at 3:02 pm
Alex
RStudio is teriffic!!! Though, I would love to see integration capabilities for Deducer.
Thanks!
Alex
March 6, 2012 at 10:39 am
Ken Williams
Count me in too, as an advocate for roxygen2 support. Even for people not developing packages, documenting ad-hoc functions this way can really reduce the barrier for future packagization.
March 6, 2012 at 10:44 am
jjallaire
Hi Ken,
We’ve implemented roxygen2 support for the next release. You can check it out now by downloading the daily build at:
http://www.rstudio.org/download/daily
J.J.