RStudio

This article is about the integrated development environment. For the company formerly known as RStudio, see Posit PBC.

RStudio IDE (or RStudio) is an integrated development environment for R, a programming language for statistical computing and graphics. It is available in two formats: RStudio Desktop is a regular desktop application while RStudio Server runs on a remote server and allows accessing RStudio using a web browser. The RStudio IDE is a product of Posit PBC (formerly RStudio PBC, formerly RStudio Inc.).

RStudio

RStudio Version 1.4.1564 on MacOS 10.15.7
Developer(s)	Posit PBC
Initial release	28 February 2011; 13 years ago (2011-02-28)[1]
Stable release	2024.04.2+764[2]  / 10 June 2024
Repository	github.com/rstudio/rstudio
Written in	Java, C++, JavaScript[3]
Operating system	Ubuntu, Fedora, Red Hat Linux, openSUSE, macOS, Windows NT
Platform	IA-32, x86-64; Qt
License	GNU Affero General Public License v3[4]
Website	posit.co/products/open-source/rstudio

Reproducible analyses with vignettes

A strength of RStudio is its support for reproducible analyses^[5] with R Markdown vignettes. These allow users to mix text with code in R, Python, Julia, shell scripts, SQL, Stan, JavaScript, C, C++, Fortran, and others,^[6] similar to Jupyter Notebooks. R Markdown can be used to create dynamic reports that are automatically updated when new data become available. These reports can also be exported in various formats, including HTML, PDF, Microsoft Word, and LaTeX, with templates specific to the requirements of many scientific journals.^[7]

R Markdown vignettes and Jupyter notebooks make the data analysis completely reproducible. R Markdown vignettes have been included as appendices with tutorials on Wikiversity.^[8]

In 2022, Posit announced an R Markdown-like publishing system called Quarto. In addition to combining results of R, code and results using Python, Julia, Observable JavaScript, and Jupyter notebooks can also be used in Quarto documents. Compared to the file extension .Rmd that R Markdown has, Quarto documents have the file extension .qmd.^[9]

One difference between R Markdown files and Quarto documents is defining options in code chunks. In R Markdown, they would be inline within the curly brackets.

```{r chunk_name, echo=FALSE, warning=FALSE}
print(42)
```

In contrast, Quarto documents define the chunk options below the curly brackets, prefixed using a pound character and vertical pipe (or "hash-pipe").

```{r}
#| label: chunk_name
#| echo: false
#| warning: false
print(42)
```

Licensing model

The RStudio integrated development environment (IDE) is available with the GNU Affero General Public License version 3. The AGPL v3 is an open source license that guarantees the freedom to share the code.

RStudio Desktop and RStudio Server are both available in free and fee-based (commercial) editions. OS support depends on the format/edition of the IDE. Prepackaged distributions of RStudio Desktop are available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. RStudio Server and Server Pro run on Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat Linux, CentOS, openSUSE and SLES.^[10]

Overview and history

The RStudio IDE is partly written in the C++ programming language and uses the Qt framework for its graphical user interface.^[11] The bigger percentage of the code is written in Java. JavaScript is also used.^[12]

Work on the RStudio IDE started around December 2010,^[13] and the first public beta version (v0.92) was officially announced in February 2011.^[1] Version 1.0 was released on 1 November 2016.^[14] Version 1.1 was released on 9 October 2017.^[15]

Addins

The RStudio IDE provides a mechanism for executing R functions interactively from within the IDE through the Addins menu.^[16] This enables packages to include Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) for increased accessibility. Popular R packages that use this feature include:

• bookdown – a knitr extension to create books
• colourpicker – a graphical tool to pick colours for plots
• datasets.load – a graphical tool to search and load datasets
• googleAuthR – Authenticate with Google APIs

Development

The RStudio IDE is developed by Posit, PBC, a public-benefit corporation^[17] founded by J. J. Allaire,^[18] creator of the programming language ColdFusion. Posit has no formal connection to the R Foundation, a not-for-profit organization located in Vienna, Austria,^[19] which is responsible for overseeing development of the R environment for statistical computing. Posit was formerly known as RStudio Inc. In July 2022, it announced that it changed its name to Posit, to signify its broadening exploration towards other programming languages such as Python.^[20]

See also

• Free and open-source software portal

• R interfaces
• Comparison of integrated development environments

References

• Monya Baker (25 May 2016). "1500 scientists lift the lid on reproducibility". Nature. 533: 452–454. ISSN 1476-4687. Wikidata Q124151114.
• Karl Popper (1968), The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Harper, Wikidata Q124151064
• Yihui Xie (25 May 2023), bookdown: Authoring Books and Technical Documents with R Markdown, Chapman & Hall, Wikidata Q124151352
• Yihui Xie; Joseph J. Allaire; Garrett Grolemund (30 December 2023), R Markdown: The Definitive Guide, Chapman & Hall, Wikidata Q76441281
• Yihui Xie; Christophe Dervieux; Emily Riederer (30 December 2023), R Markdown Cookbook, Chapman & Hall, Wikidata Q124151180

Notes

1. "RStudio, new open-source IDE for R | RStudio Blog". Blog.rstudio.org. Archived from the original on 2015-01-24. Retrieved 2015-05-01.
2. https://github.com/rstudio/rstudio/releases/tag/v2024.04.2%2B764. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
3. "rstudio/rstudio". GitHub. RStudio. Archived from the original on 5 April 2019. Retrieved 18 December 2016.
4. Pylvainen, Ian (2016-03-24). "What license is RStudio available under? – RStudio". rstudio.com. Archived from the original on 2018-05-26. Retrieved 2018-05-25.
5. Reproducibility is key in science. In The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper wrote, "non-reproducible single occurrences are of no significance to science." But a theory is "falsified only if we discover a reproducible effect which refutes the theory". Popper (1968, p. 86). However, reproducibility is not easy to obtain. In a 2016 survey of over 1,500 scientists, 52% agreed that there was "a significant crisis" in the reproducibility of scientific results. Another 38% said there was "a slight crisis"; 7% "didn't know", and only 3% said there was no crisis. Worse, "more than 70% of researchers had tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments, and more than half had failed to reproduce their own experiments (emphasis added). See Baker (2016).
6. Xie et al. (2023, esp. sec. 2.7).
7. Xie, Allaire, and Grolemund (2023).
8. e.g., v:US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita and v:Forecasting nuclear proliferation, accessed 5 January 2024. Many more examples are included in Xie, Dervieux, and Riederer (2023).
9. Machlis, Sharon (2022-07-28). "What is Quarto? RStudio rolls out next-generation R Markdown". InfoWorld. Retrieved 2024-05-17.
10. "RStudio". rstudio.com. Archived from the original on 30 October 2015. Retrieved 2 December 2016.
11. Verzani, John (23 September 2011). Getting Started with RStudio. O'Reilly Media, Inc. p. 4. ISBN 9781449309039.
12. "rstudio/rstudio". GitHub. Archived from the original on 2018-06-10. Retrieved 2018-09-13.
13. "portable download of java dependencies · rstudio/rstudio@484cb88 · GitHub". Github.com. 2010-12-07. Archived from the original on 2019-04-05. Retrieved 2015-05-01.
14. "Announcing RStudio v1.0!". RStudio Blog. 1 November 2016. Archived from the original on 30 June 2017. Retrieved 1 November 2016.
15. "RStudio v1.1 Released". RStudio Blog. 9 October 2017. Archived from the original on 28 October 2021. Retrieved 23 December 2017.
16. "RStudio Addins". RStudio. Archived from the original on 2018-09-10. Retrieved 2018-09-16.
17. "Posit Benefit Corporation Annual Report". Archived from the original on 2023-01-19. Retrieved 2023-01-19.
18. "About". Posit.co. Archived from the original on 2022-11-02. Retrieved 2015-12-15.
19. ""Statutes of "The R Foundation for Statistical Computing""" (PDF). The R Foundation. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2020-04-03. Retrieved 2019-08-12.
20. "RStudio is becoming Posit". Posit.co. Archived from the original on 2022-11-02. Retrieved 2022-07-28.

External links

• Official website