How to use renv package in shiny app to avoid installing new packages on shiny server?

Question

I wanted to test renv package for shiny app. here is my dummy app:

library(pool)
library(fresh)
library(shiny)


ui <- fluidPage(
    titlePanel("Old Faithful Geyser Data"),
    sidebarLayout(
        sidebarPanel(
            sliderInput("bins",
                        "Number of bins:",
                        min = 1,
                        max = 50,
                        value = 30)
        ),

        mainPanel(
           plotOutput("distPlot")
        )
    )
)
server <- function(input, output) {

    output$distPlot <- renderPlot({
        x    <- faithful[, 2]
        bins <- seq(min(x), max(x), length.out = input$bins + 1)
        hist(x, breaks = bins, col = 'darkgray', border = 'white')
    })
}
shinyApp(ui = ui, server = server)

Note that I just load 2 libraries pool and fresh without using them. init() command from renv package is creating a local library on my project path:

renv::init("/home/z0044uca/mytest_renv/") 

* Initializing project ...
* Discovering package dependencies ... Done!
* Copying packages into the cache ... [21/21] Done!
The following package(s) will be updated in the lockfile:

# CRAN ===============================
- BH            [* -> 1.72.0-3]
- R6            [* -> 2.4.1]
- Rcpp          [* -> 1.0.5]
- base64enc     [* -> 0.1-3]
- commonmark    [* -> 1.7]
- crayon        [* -> 1.3.4]
- digest        [* -> 0.6.25]
- fastmap       [* -> 1.0.1]
- glue          [* -> 1.4.2]
- htmltools     [* -> 0.5.0]
- httpuv        [* -> 1.5.4]
- jsonlite      [* -> 1.7.1]
- later         [* -> 1.1.0.1]
- magrittr      [* -> 1.5]
- mime          [* -> 0.9]
- promises      [* -> 1.1.1]
- renv          [* -> 0.12.5]
- rlang         [* -> 0.4.7]
- shiny         [* -> 1.5.0]
- sourcetools   [* -> 0.1.7]
- withr         [* -> 2.2.0]
- xtable        [* -> 1.8-4]

* Lockfile written to '~/mytest_renv/renv.lock'.
* Project '~/mytest_renv' loaded. [renv 0.12.5]

Restarting R session...

* Project '~/mytest_renv' loaded. [renv 0.12.5]

My question is how could I deploy the app to my shiny- server without installing the two packages ( pool and fresh ) on the server.

When I copied the entire folder ( mytest_renv ) to my server and tried to run the app in browser, I got the following error (in the log file )

Warning message:
The following package(s) are missing entries in the cache:

        base64enc, BH, commonmark, crayon, DBI, digest, fastmap,
        fresh, fs, glue, htmltools, httpuv, jsonlite, later,
        magrittr, mime, pool, promises, R6, rappdirs, Rcpp, rlang,
        rstudioapi, sass, shiny, sourcetools, withr, xtable

These packages will need to be reinstalled.

Error in loadNamespace(name) : there is no package called ‘digest’
Calls: local ... loadNamespace -> withRestarts -> withOneRestart -> doWithOneRestart
Execution halted

I was expecting that the renv folder inside my app directory take care of all the packages and dependencies.

Answer 1

https://community.rstudio.com/t/shiny-server-renv/71879/2 may be relevant -- you likely want to call renv::isolate() before copying your project folder.