Regarding dependencies.R, is it needed without rsconnect?

[SaintRod]

In the dependencies.R file there is a comment that states:

# This file allows packrat (used by rsconnect during deployment) to pick up dependencies.

Questions:

1. Is this file needed if I'm not using rsconnect to deploy the app? Additionally, hasn't packrat been superseded by renv?
2. If this file is not needed, might a feature proposal be to give the user the option not to create this file?
3. What risk exists in deleting the file? Does anything depend on the file?

[kamilzyla]

Hi @SaintRod and thanks for asking!

Currently two features of Rhino use this file:

1. pkg_install() and pkg_remove() functions will recreate it, if it does not exist.
2. Rhino uses a .renvignore file so that renv only reads dependencies only from dependencies.R (details).

At the time when we devised this solution, packrat has been already deprecated for a while, but it was still being used by rsconnect for dependency discovery (it only started using renv by default in version 1.0.0).

I'd like us to find a better solution, but it's not as simple as getting rid of dependencies.R and .renvignore, as we do want to have a central location with a list of all project dependencies (we tried using DESCRIPTION in the past, but we had some issues without using a package).

With that said, if you delete dependencies.R and .renvignore, your project should work fine, though I can't make a promise 😉

[SaintRod]

Thanks for the insight!

PS. I'm developing a shiny app using Rhino for the first time and all I can say is well done! I've greatly enjoyed using Rhino.