RStudio 1.2 releases with improved testing and support for Python chunks, R scripts, and much more!

Last week, the team behind RStudio released RStudio 1.2 that includes dozens of new productivity enhancements and capabilities. RStudio 1.2 is compatible with projects in SQL, Stan, Python, and D3. With this release, testing R code integrations for shinytest and testthat is easier. Users can create, test, and publish APIs in R with Plumber and run R scripts.

What’s new in RStudio 1.2?

Python sessions

This release uses a shared Python session for executing Python chunks. It comes with simple bindings to access R objects from Python chunks and vice versa.

Keyring

In RStudio 1.2, passwords and secrets are stored securely with keyring by calling rstudioapi::askForSecret(). Users can install keyring directly from dialog prompt.

Run R scripts

Users can now run any R script as a background job in a clean R session and can also have a look at the script output in real time.

Testing with RStudio 1.2

Users can opt for Run Tests command in testthat R scripts for directly running their projects. The testthat output in the Build pane now comes with navigable issue list.

PowerPoint

Users can now create PowerPoint presentations with R Markdown

Package management

With RStudio 1.2, users can now Specify a primary CRAN URL and secondary CRAN repos from the package preferences pane. Users can link to a package’s primary CRAN page from the packages pane. The CRAN repos can be configured with a repos.conf configuration file and the r-cran-repos-file option.

Plumber

Users can now easily create Plumber APIs in RStudio 1.2 and execute them within RStudio to view Swagger documentation and make test calls to the APIs

Bug fixes in RStudio 1.2

In this release, the issue regarding “invalid byte sequence” has been fixed.

Incorrect Git status has been rectified.

Issues with low/no-contrast colors with HTML widgets has been fixed.

It seems most users are excited about this release and they think that this way, Python will be more accessible to R users. A user commented on HackerNews, “I’m personally an Emacs Speaks Statistics fan myself, but RStudio has been huge boon to the R community. I expect that this will go a long ways towards making Python more accessible to R users.”

Some are not much happy with this release as they think it has less options for graphics. Another comment reads, “I wish rstudio would render markdown in-line. It also tends to forget graphics in output after many open and closes of rmd. I’m intrigued by .org mode but as far as I can tell, there are not options for graphical output while editing.”

To know more about this news, check out the post by RStudio.

How to create your own R package with RStudio [Tutorial]

The new RStudio Package Manager is now generally available

Getting Started with RStudio