RStudio IDE (or RStudio) is an

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...

for R, a

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

for statistical computing and graphics. It's available in two formats: RStudio Desktop is a regular

desktop application Application software is any computer program that is intended for end-user use not operating, administering or programming the computer. An application (app, application program, software application) is any program that can be categorized as ...

while RStudio Server runs on a remote server and allows accessing RStudio using a

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

. The RStudio IDE is a product of Posit PBC (formerly RStudio PBC, formerly RStudio Inc.).

Reproducible analyses with vignettes

A strength of RStudio is its support for reproducible analyses with R Markdown vignettes. These allow users to mix text with code in R, Python, Julia, shell scripts,

SQL Structured Query Language (SQL) (pronounced ''S-Q-L''; or alternatively as "sequel") is a domain-specific language used to manage data, especially in a relational database management system (RDBMS). It is particularly useful in handling s ...

, Stan,

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

, C, C++, Fortran, and others, similar to Jupyter Notebooks. R Markdown can be used to create dynamic reports that are automatically updated when new data become available. These reports can also be exported in various formats, including

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor program, word processing program developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platf ...

, and

LaTeX Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latices are found in nature, but synthetic latices are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a wikt:milky, milky fluid, which is present in 10% of all floweri ...

, with templates specific to the requirements of many scientific journals. R Markdown vignettes and Jupyter notebooks make the data analysis completely reproducible. R Markdown vignettes have been included as appendices with tutorials on

Wikiversity Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project that supports learning communities, their learning materials, and resulting activities. It differs from Wikipedia in that it offers tutorials and other materials for the fostering of learning, rather ...

. In 2022, Posit announced an R Markdown-like publishing system called

Quarto Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...

. In addition to combining results of R, code and results using Python, Julia, Observable JavaScript, and

Jupyter Project Jupyter (pronounced "Jupiter") is a project to develop open-source software, open standards, and services for interactive computing across multiple programming languages. It was spun off from IPython in 2014 by Fernando Pérez and Brian ...

notebooks can also be used in Quarto documents. Compared to the file extension .Rmd that R Markdown has, Quarto documents have the file extension .qmd. One difference between R Markdown files and Quarto documents is defining options in code chunks. In R Markdown, they would be inline within the curly brackets. ``` print(42) ``` In contrast, Quarto documents define the chunk options below the curly brackets, prefixed using a pound character and vertical pipe (or "hash-pipe"). ``` #, label: chunk_name #, echo: false #, warning: false print(42) ```

Licensing model

The RStudio

(IDE) is available with the

GNU Affero General Public License The GNU Affero General Public License (GNU AGPL) is a free, copyleft license published by the Free Software Foundation in November 2007, and based on the GNU GPL version 3 and the ''Affero General Public License'' (non-GNU). It is intended fo ...

version 3. The AGPL v3 is an open source license that guarantees the freedom to share the code. RStudio Desktop and RStudio Server are both available in free and fee-based (commercial) editions. OS support depends on the format/edition of the IDE. Prepackaged distributions of RStudio Desktop are available for

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

, and

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

. RStudio Server and Server Pro run on

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...

Red Hat Linux Red Hat Linux was a widely used commercial open-source Linux distribution created by Red Hat until its discontinuation in 2004. Early releases of Red Hat Linux were called Red Hat Commercial Linux. Red Hat published the first non-beta release ...

CentOS CentOS (, from Community Enterprise Operating System; also known as CentOS Linux) is a discontinued Linux distribution that provided a free and open-source community-supported computing platform, functionally compatible with its upstream (softw ...

openSUSE openSUSE () is a free and open-source software, free and open-source Linux distribution developed by the openSUSE project. It is offered in two main variations: ''Tumbleweed'', an upstream rolling release distribution, and ''Leap'', a stable r ...

and SLES.

Overview and history

The RStudio IDE is partly written in the C++ programming language and uses the Qt framework for its

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

. The bigger percentage of the code is written in Java. JavaScript is also used. Work on the RStudio IDE started around December 2010, and the first public

beta version The software release life cycle is the process of developing, testing, and distributing a software product (e.g., an operating system). It typically consists of several stages, such as pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and release candidate, before the fi ...

(v0.92) was officially announced in February 2011. Version 1.0 was released on 1 November 2016. Version 1.1 was released on 9 October 2017.

Addins

The RStudio IDE provides a mechanism for executing R functions interactively from within the IDE through the Addins menu. This enables packages to include

s (GUIs) for increased accessibility. Popular R packages that use this feature include: * bookdown – a knitr extension to create books * colourpicker – a graphical tool to pick colours for plots * datasets.load – a graphical tool to search and load datasets * googleAuthR – Authenticate with Google APIs

Development

The RStudio IDE is developed by Posit, PBC, a public-benefit corporation founded by J. J. Allaire, creator of the programming language

ColdFusion Adobe ColdFusion is a commercial rapid web-application development computing platform created by J. J. Allaire in 1995. (The programming language used with that platform is also commonly called ColdFusion, though is more accurately known as CF ...

. Posit has no formal connection to the R Foundation, a

not-for-profit A not-for-profit or non-for-profit organization (NFPO) is a Legal Entity, legal entity that does not distribute surplus funds to its members and is formed to fulfill specific objectives. While not-for-profit organizations and Nonprofit organ ...

organization located in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

, which is responsible for overseeing development of the R environment for statistical computing. Posit was formerly known as RStudio Inc. In July 2022, it announced that it changed its name to Posit, to signify its broadening exploration towards other programming languages such as Python.

References

* * * * *

Notes

External links

* {{Integrated development environments Free R (programming language) software R (programming language) Science software for Linux Software using the GNU Affero General Public License