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Speending up your image with renv

·384 words·2 mins
Docker R Renv
Andryas Wavrzenczak
Author
Andryas Wavrzenczak

To be completely transparent, my experience with renv only began last week. This need arose as I’ve been juggling multiple Shiny applications, each bundled into their own Docker image. In these images, I meticulously specify each package and its version.

However, I’ve hit a snag: my Dockerfiles are growing increasingly unwieldy and complex. That’s when I decided to test the waters with renv.

My initial week with renv has been largely positive; it’s user-friendly and straightforward. But, integrating it into my Docker image building process has been a bit of a challenge.

For those curious, this article offers insights into using Docker and renv together. It suggests three strategies, but none perfectly matched my needs:

  1. Install all the R packages every time the docker image is generated, which means a lot of time
  2. Split your docker image in two parts, one to “freeze” the package installation, second for your code.
  3. Share a volume of your cache to a run-time container.

However, I believe there’s a 4th, more efficient approach:

  1. Retrieve packages from the cache when available; otherwise, install them. This way, the lengthy installation process is only a one-time inconvenience.

In my quest for a solution, I stumbled upon a stack overflow discussion that addresses a similar issue for Python projects. It turns out that the problem I’m facing with R is fundamentally the same.

Let’s build a docker file caching the r packages.

First clone the following repository

Andryas/docker_renv

R
0
0

Second, you just need the Dockerfile and build.sh, all the other files were there only for example.

Now, in your projet you can setting the renv as usual

renv::init()
renv::snapshot()

and if you want to build your docker image

build.sh

Done, it is ready to use and faster then furious. (rsrs)

Screenshots
#

Just setting the image with no package installed
# 

bash build.sh

144 seconds, not bad.

Installing dplyr
# 

# uncomment the library R/dplyr.R
R -e "renv::snapshot()"
bash build.sh

you can see that everything before stage 11 was cached. And just to install dplyr it took 663 seconds, good 10 minutes.

Now, if I just update the renv.lock with a new package? how long it is going to take?

Installing dplyr + wesanderson
# 

# uncomment the library R/wesanderson.R
R -e "renv::snapshot()"
bash build.sh

20 seconds!!!!!!!!

That’s it.

Cheers