Persisting RStudio preferences

In the context of your runs, the RStudio user preferences (such as theme) are stored in a file located at /home/ubuntu/.rstudio/monitored/user-settings/user-settings. You can launch RStudio with custom preferences by modifying this file via the pre-setup script of a custom compute environment.

Method 1: Write lines to settings file

If you know the line you need to add to the settings file, you can write it directly in the pre-setup script. For example:

mkdir -p /home/ubuntu/.rstudio/monitored/user-settings/
echo 'uiPrefs={"theme" : "Mono Industrial"}' >> /home/ubuntu/.rstudio/monitored/user-settings/user-settings
chown -R ubuntu:ubuntu /home/ubuntu/.rstudio
if [ -f .domino/launch-rstudio-server ]; then
    sed -i.bak 's# > ~/.rstudio/monitored/user-settings/user-settings# >> ~/.rstudio/monitored/user-settings/user-settings#' .domino/launch-rstudio-server
    chown ubuntu:ubuntu .domino/launch-rstudio-server
fi

Here's what each line is doing:

• The mkdir statement creates the encompassing directory.
• The echo statement writes the theme to the file. This can be replaced with a copy operation if you'd prefer to store a file in your project (see next section).
• The chown statements are needed to avoid a permissions error.
• The sed statement modifies a Domino script that would otherwise overwrite this settings file.

Method 2: Copy a saved settings file

If you aren't sure which lines to write, or if you want to persist this settings file in your project, you can save a copy in your project and use the following pre-setup script code to apply it to your session.

First, run a session and modify the RStudio preferences to your liking. Before you stop the session, copy the user-settings file to the root of your project directory. You can do so with this line of R code:

file.copy("/home/ubuntu/.rstudio/monitored/user-settings/user-settings", ".")

Then, add the following lines to the pre-setup script of your environment definition, in order to load the preferences file (if it exists) on subsequent runs:

if [ -f user-settings ]; then
    mkdir -p /home/ubuntu/.rstudio/monitored/user-settings/
    cp user-settings /home/ubuntu/.rstudio/monitored/user-settings
    sed -i.bak '/initialWorkingDirectory=/d' /home/ubuntu/.rstudio/monitored/user-settings/user-settings
    chown -R ubuntu:ubuntu /home/ubuntu/.rstudio
    if [ -f .domino/launch-rstudio-server ]; then
        sed -i.bak 's# > ~/.rstudio/monitored/user-settings/user-settings# >> ~/.rstudio/monitored/user-settings/user-settings#' .domino/launch-rstudio-server
        chown ubuntu:ubuntu .domino/launch-rstudio-server
    fi
fi

Note: the sed statement that deletes the "initialWorkingDirectory" variable is necessary to make sure your session starts with the correct working directory.