Problems running cat() in .Rprofile at start up

[davidkane9]

Type: Bug

Edit your .Rprofile to include a line like:

cat("This is the .Rprofile in my home directory.")

Restart your R session within Positron. In Positron, I see:

R 4.4.2 exited (preparing for restart)
R 4.4.2 restarted.
>

What I expect to see is something like:

R 4.4.2 exited (preparing for restart)
R 4.4.2 restarted.
This is the .Rprofile in my home directory.
>

VS Code version: Positron 1.96.0 (Universal) (55f7331, 2025-02-10T16:03:19.797Z)
OS version: Darwin arm64 23.6.0
Modes:

System Info

Item	Value
CPUs	Apple M1 Max (10 x 2400)
GPU Status	2d_canvas: enabled canvas_oop_rasterization: enabled_on direct_rendering_display_compositor: disabled_off_ok gpu_compositing: enabled multiple_raster_threads: enabled_on opengl: enabled_on rasterization: enabled raw_draw: disabled_off_ok skia_graphite: disabled_off video_decode: enabled video_encode: enabled webgl: enabled webgl2: enabled webgpu: enabled webnn: disabled_off
Load (avg)	4, 3, 3
Memory (System)	64.00GB (15.68GB free)
Process Argv
Screen Reader	no
VM	0%

Extensions: none

[DavisVaughan]

I imagine it is running, i.e. if you put x <- 1 in there, you can probably type x in the console and see that it is assigned to 1. But that cat() output isn't appearing right now, though I would have sworn we fixed that...

[davidkane9]

Thanks. x <- 1 does indeed work.

But source("renv/activate.R") does not, which is my actual underlying problem.

[DavisVaughan]

@jmcphers this seems to be an issue with the kernel supervisor. If I turn off the kernel supervisor and go back to the jupyter adaptor, then I see the cat() output, but with the supervisor on, I do not see it. This does happen very very early in the lifecycle of the kernel, so that probably has something to do with it

[DavisVaughan]

If you put both of these in the same Rprofile, then do you still see x in the console? If so, then source() is also definitely running, but is possibly erroring for some reason and the error is getting swallowed.

x <- 1
source("renv/activate.R")

[davidkane9]

Yes, with this:

x <- 1
source("renv/activate.R")

x is available. But, with:

source("renv/activate.R")
x <- 1

x is not available. So, presumably, source("renv/activate.R") is causing some silent error. This is not good for those of us who use renv.

If I run the source() command directly at the Console, all looks good:

> source("renv/activate.R")
- Project '~/Desktop/projects/tutorial.helpers' loaded. [renv 1.1.1]
>

[juliasilge]

Maybe a regression for #1481?

Perhaps we should consider a test with cat() in an .Rprofile to keep us from breaking this again.