Workbench FAQs
Last updated on 2025-06-30 | Edit this page
Installation FAQ
Why does it take 5 lines of code to install the infrastructure?
As the Workbench packages are in The Carpentries R-Universe and not CRAN, we need to tell R to get the packages from R-Universe.
What is an R Library?
An R library is a folder on your computer that stores R packages. When you install R packages, the first message you will see will probably be something like (on Windows):
Installing packages into ‘C:/Users/USER/Documents/R/win-library/4.0’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)On Ubuntu, this may look like:
Installing packages into ‘/home/<user>/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/4.4’This folder is where all of the R packages you install via
install.packages() will live. If you ever need to look this
up, you can use the .libPaths() function.
Opening your R environment
If you are using RStudio, you can open it by double-clicking on the RStudio icon in your application launcher; you do not have to open R separately to use RStudio.
If you are using R, you can open it in your terminal application by
typing R. Your prompt will be replaced by a
>, which indicates that you are in R’s interactive REPL.
You can exit R or RStudio by typing q() in the R
console.
Setting up your R workspace
When you set up R, it’s important to make sure you set it up to always start R with a clean slate[^workspace]: never save your workspace on exit and never load a previously saved workspace on startup.
Via RStudio
If you are using RStudio, you can follow the instructions in this forum post:
- From the menu, select
Tools > Global Options - Under Workspace Options, de-select “Restore .RData into workspace at startup” and set “Save workspace to .RData on exit” to “Never”