Restarts R

Restarts R by quitting the current R session and launching a new one.

restart(
  status = 0L,
  workdir = NULL,
  rcmd = NULL,
  args = NULL,
  envvars = NULL,
  as = c("current", "specified", "R CMD build", "R CMD check", "R CMD INSTALL"),
  quiet = FALSE,
  debug = NA
)

Arguments

status

An integer specifying the exit code of the current R session.

workdir

The working directory where the new R session should be launched from. If NULL, then the working directory that was in place when the startup package was first loaded. If using startup::startup() in an .Rprofile startup file, then this is likely to record the directory from which R itself was launched from.

rcmd

A character string specifying the command for launching R. The default is the same as used to launch the current R session, i.e. commandArgs()[1].

args

A character vector specifying zero or more command-line arguments to be appended to the system call of rcmd.

envvars

A named character vector of environment variables to be set when calling R.

as

A character string specifying a predefined setups of rcmd, args, and envvars. For details, see below.

quiet

Should the restart be quiet or not? If NA and as == "current", then quiet is TRUE if the current R session was started quietly, otherwise FALSE.

debug

If TRUE, debug messages are outputted, otherwise not.

Predefined setups

Argument as may take the following values:

"current":

(Default) A setup that emulates the setup of the current R session as far as possible by relaunching R with the same command-line call (= base::commandArgs()).

"specified":

According to rcmd, args, and envvars.

"R CMD build":

A setup that emulates R CMD build as far as possible.

"R CMD check":

A setup that emulates R CMD check as far as possible, which happens to be identical to the "R CMD build" setup.

"R CMD INSTALL":

A setup that emulates R CMD INSTALL as far as possible.

If specified, command-line arguments in args and environment variables in envvars are appended accordingly.

Known limitations

It is not possible to restart an R session running in RGui on Microsoft Windows using this function.

It is not possible to restart an R session in the RStudio Console using this function. However, it does work when running R in the RStudio Terminal.

RStudio provides rstudioapi::restartSession() which will indeed restart the RStudio Console. However, it does not let you control how R is restarted, e.g. with what command-line options and what environment variables. Importantly, the new R session will have the same set of packages loaded as before, the same variables in the global environment, and so on.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
  ## Relaunch R with debugging of startup::startup() enabled
  startup::restart(envvars = c(R_STARTUP_DEBUG = TRUE))

  ## Relaunch R without loading user Rprofile files
  startup::restart(args = "--no-init-file")

  ## Mimic 'R CMD build' and 'R CMD check'
  startup::restart(as = "R CMD build")
  startup::restart(as = "R CMD check")
  ## ... which are both short for
  startup::restart(args = c("--no-restore"),
                   envvars = c(R_DEFAULT_PACKAGES="", LC_COLLATE="C"))
} # }