R DevContainers V2 Guide

devcontainers.md

🧪 VS Code Dev Containers for R — Ranked & Explained

A ranked comparison of R dev containers that work great in VS Code, both locally with Docker and remotely via GitHub Codespaces.

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🥇 revodavid/devcontainers-rstudio

✅ Summary

• VS Code support: Yes — fully usable without RStudio Server
• Local: Works via Docker + VS Code
• Codespaces: Fully supported
• Includes: R, RStudio Server (optional), Quarto CLI, renv, tidyverse, devtools, languageserver
• 🔧 Workshop-ready with teaching tools included

🔧 Local Setup

git clone https://github.com/revodavid/devcontainers-rstudio.git
cd devcontainers-rstudio

Open the folder in VS Code and run: Dev Containers: Reopen in Container

☁️ Codespaces Setup

• Open: revodavid/devcontainers-rstudio
• Click: Code → Codespaces → New codespace

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🥈 grantmcdermott/codespaces-r2u

✅ Summary

• VS Code support: Yes
• Local: Supported via Docker
• Codespaces: Optimized for GitHub Codespaces
• Includes: Fast R setup using r2u, tidyverse, quarto, devtools, and more
• ⚡ CRAN packages install almost instantly via apt

🔧 Local Usage

git clone https://github.com/grantmcdermott/codespaces-r2u.git
cd codespaces-r2u

Open in VS Code and reopen in container.

☁️ Codespaces Usage

• Open: codespaces-r2u
• Click: Code → Codespaces → New codespace

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🥉 rocker-org/devcontainer-templates

✅ Summary

• VS Code support: Yes

• Local & Codespaces: Supported

• Includes: A collection of starter templates:

  • r-ver – Base R
  • r2u – Fast CRAN
  • r-devel – Development builds

These are templates, not full dev environments — you build on top of them.

🧰 To use:

devcontainer templates apply

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🪶 rocker-org/devcontainer-try-r

🧪 Summary

• Minimal example for trying R in dev containers
• Good for exploration, not full workflows

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🧪 revodavid/devcontainers-r

📚 Summary

• Tutorial-oriented
• Less complete than devcontainers-rstudio
• Still good for teaching small workshops

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🛠️ Want a Custom Setup?

Want a minimal container with:

• R + VS Code (no RStudio)
• tidyverse, data.table, devtools
• Quarto support
• Pre-installed extensions or Git hooks?

Let me know — I can help scaffold a clean, shareable dev environment tailored to your needs.

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Let me know if you'd like this saved as a README.md or injected into a repo.