RStudio Experience in a Real Editor

A Sublime Text plug-in that tries to bring parts of the user experience of RStudio to Sublime Text. It is primarily designed to fulfill my personal needs, but you may find it useful as a template for your own customizations. SublimeStudio has borrowed heavily from R-Box by randy3k (which is available through package control).

Features

• a prominent top level menu in SublimeStudio. You will love it (if R is your main language), or hate it (otherwise).

• RStudio niceties: shiny, rmarkdown, roxygen, load all, build and reload

• Support for different versions of R (or S-plus, or remote R sessions)

• An efficient debugging strategy

• Windows and Mac support

Installation

• Download the zip folder. Unzip.

• Move the SublimeStudio folder to your package directory (Preferences > Browse Packages).

• On Windows, adjust the path to your R installation(s) in SublimeStudio.sublime-settings.

The Sublime Studio Menu

All functions can be called from the SublimeStudio menu; the more frequent ones also have a short-key:

Setting the R-directory

Many functions from the menu need the 'R-directory' to be set. Press Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+H to use the current file's folder as the 'R-directory'. If you use, e.g., LoadAll (Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+L), this directory will be loaded.

For convenience, if you are inside the R subfolder of an R package, the parent folder is chosen.

If you want to run a Shiny app, make the directory of your shiny app (the one with ui.R and server.R) your 'R-directory'. Press Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+A to run the app.

Debugging

For R debugging, I find the following strategy useful:

1. Mark the command you want to investigate and save it in the SublimStudio R-Buffer (Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+O). It stays there until you re-assign the buffer.

2. Set a browser() somewhere in your function.

3. Press Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+L: This saves the file, re-loads the package (using devtools) und runs the buffer line, so that R will halt were you set the browser. (Make sure the option browserNLdisabled is set to TRUE; otherwise new lines will quit the browser.)

4. After changing the code, press Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+Q to quit the browser and Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+L to retry.

Switching R Versions

Press Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+V to select different versions of R. Occasionally, I also use S-plus with SublimeStudio, which helps me forget that I use S-plus. I also added a terminal option (on Mac) to work directly on a Linux server.

Credits

Randy3k, as mentioned. Autohotkey, which is included in the bin folder and used on Windows to transfer data from Sublime Text to R.