Which R-focused features *won't* be supported?

[EllaKaye]

Hello. I'm really excited to try Positron and see how it develops. As an R developer, the following comment in the FAQ stood out to me:

some R-focused features will remain exclusive to RStudio

As I contemplate making the shift from RStudio to Positron, is it possible for you to say more about which R-focused features will remain exclusive to RStudio?

In particular, at present Positron seems to be missing features to aid package development (I can't see a 'build' pane, for example). Are there plans to add in that functionality?

[jmcphers]

We don't have a final list, but here's some general guidance:

RStudio and Positron use different UI layouts and elements so porting over functionality isn't going to be a 1-to-1 match. The Build pane is a good example of something that's largely replaced by other concepts in Positron (Tasks, multiple/grouped terminals, custom commands, etc.) We do plan to have someplace to put project scoped commands. See here: #1486

With respect to package development in particular, most of the commands you'll need can be found on the Command Palette. If you open an R package in Positron and search for "package" in the Palette, you should find everything you need:

Examples of things we don't have near-term plans to bring to Positron are:

• Sweave/Rnw support
• R Markdown and Quarto inline outputs
• R profiling support (e.g. profvis)
• Rcpp-specific project support (though there are pretty good C/C++ addins)
• Full support for RStudio add-ins (though we're gradually adding API support)

Hope that helps a little! Even more generally, if you're happy with RStudio, there's no reason to switch to Positron. RStudio is not going away and Positron is still in its infancy.

[clauswilke]

@jmcphers The discussion in rstudio/rstudio#5280 is misleading for the question at hand here. Yes, when there are two places where output can go (console or inline, depending on context) it can be confusing, but if there's only one place (like in Jupyter notebooks) it's not. So the problem is not that results are shown inline, but that there are two places where results can be shown, and users get confused about which results appear where when.

[ntluong95]

I agree with the point of @clauswilke. Re-arrange a Jupyter notebook is a nightmare, not easy as just copy and paste text. Even without in-line result, Quarto currently still has many bugs and lack a lot of functionalities to make it as an editor of choice in Positron. Please at least bring the user experience as same as in Rstudio so we, the users likes to work with R can comfortably working with Python and feel home

[juliasilge]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts here! We have #1418 and #1533 open where we are tracking features around inline vs. send-to-console experiences, if you have something specific to add to either of those. We know this is something people have really strong feelings about!

As of today,

• If you want an inline experience, use .ipynb
• If you want a send-to-console experience, use .qmd

We appreciate you all sharing your preferences! 🙌

[SETOsfk]

Is "import dataset" from R studio will be supported in positron? I really liked that option tbh it was making things easier.

[juliasilge]

We have talked about a "data import wizard", much like RStudio's, yes! We don't have this work slated for the very near future but it is helpful for us to hear what people are missing from other IDEs they have used.

[vinaychuri]

There is a comment above that states "If you want an inline experience, use .ipynb"
Can you pls advice if any other settings need to be set for the inline charts to be displayed for ipynb with R4.4.1 interpreter ? As of now my plots are being displayed in the Plots pane and not inline.

[juliasilge]

Ah, this is #3846 that you are running into! Thank you for the report. 👍