rv migrate renv

rv migrate renv will initialize an existing renv project by:

1. Setting up the project infrastructure, including the project library and activation scripts.
2. Migrating your renv.lock file to a rv config file.

We cannot guarantee rv will migrate your renv project in its entirety, but any dependencies not fully migrated will be logged.

Common Migration Issues

Some common reasons a dependency may not be able to be migrated

Package not found

If you get the error Package not found in repositories, this is because the repository source was not captured in the renv.lock repositories section.

In order to finish migrating this package, add the package to the dependencies field and a repository containing the package to the repositories section.

Version not found

If you get the error Package version (1.2.3) not found in repositories Found version 2.3.4 in https://cran.rstudio.com, this is because the package version of interest is in the archive and not in any of the repositories directly.

This is the most common error when dealing with renv migration. Because rv does not support version pinning within the config file, versions not found to be sourced directly from the repository cannot be specified in the config file.

In order to finish migrating this package:

1. If the exact version is required and can be found in a different repository, add both the dependency and repository to the config
2. If the exact version is required and cannot be found in a different repository, use the url dependency format to directly access the archive
3. If the exact version is not required, simply add the dependency to the config

Usage

rv migrate renv [OPTIONS] [renv_file]

Arguments

• renv_file optional - Path to a renv lock file to migrate to an rv config file in the current working directory.

  Default: ./renv.lock

Options

• --strict-r-version - As discussed in the config r_version section, the R version is recommended to only be listed as the major and minor components. This flag will include the patch in the R version if needed.

• --no_r_environment - By default, rv creates a R environment .rv to enable rv to be called in R code (see rvr for more info). This flag will disable this R environment

Example

Let’s start with the following renv.lock:

{
  "R": {
    "Version": "4.4.0",
    "Repositories": [
      {
        "Name": "CRAN",
        "URL": "https://cloud.r-project.org"
      }
    ]
  },
  "Packages": {
    "cli": {
      "Package": "cli",
      "Version": "3.6.3",
      "Source": "Repository",
      "Repository": "CRAN",
      "Requirements": [
        "R",
        "utils"
      ],
      "Hash": "b21916dd77a27642b447374a5d30ecf3"
    },
    "glue": {
      "Package": "glue",
      "Version": "1.7.0",
      "Source": "Repository",
      "Repository": "CRAN",
      "Requirements": [
        "R",
        "methods"
      ],
      "Hash": "e0b3a53876554bd45879e596cdb10a52"
    },
    "osinfo": {
        "Package": "osinfo",
        "Version": "0.0.1",
        "Source": "Repository",
        "Repository": "a2-ai",
        "Requirements": [],
        "Hash": "854424f3156e9456886cda02d488ddd1"
    },
    "stringi": {
      "Package": "stringi",
      "Version": "1.8.4",
      "Source": "Repository",
      "Repository": "CRAN",
      "Requirements": [
        "R",
        "stats",
        "tools",
        "utils"
      ],
      "Hash": "39e1144fd75428983dc3f63aa53dfa91"
    }
  }
}

In the project containing this renv.lock file, we’ll run the following command:

% rv migrate renv
renv.lock was migrated to rproject.toml with 3 unresolved packages:
    `cli` could not be resolved due to:
        "Package version (3.6.3) not found in repositories. Found version 3.6.5 in https://cran.rstudio.com"
    `osinfo` could not be resolved due to:
        "Package not found in repositories."
    `stringi` could not be resolved due to:
        "Package version (1.8.4) not found in repositories. Found version 1.8.7 in https://cran.rstudio.com"

In this case, rv was not able to migrate 3 of 4 packages, but provided some important information to aid us in how to add those packages to our project and added the successfully migrated package to the config:

rproject.toml

# this config was migrated from renv.lock on 2025-05-22T00:00:00+00:00[Etc/UTC]
[project]
name = "renv-demo"
r_version = "4.4"

repositories = [
    { alias = "CRAN", url = "https://cran.rstudio.com" },
]

dependencies = [
    { name = "glue", repository = "CRAN" },
]

We see the repository and R version listed in the renv.lock have both been migrated to the config file. glue was also added to the config since the available version in the repository at the time of migration is the same as the locked version. Note, the repository field is listed explicitly on all migrated packages to ensure reproducibility from renv.

Next, we’ll address the issues and how we’ll choose to resolve them:

• cli - CRAN does contain this package, but at a higher version. We determine we cannot upgrade to the latest version available, therefore we will add this package as a URL dependency, pointing to the archive.
• osinfo - CRAN does not contain this package, but A2-Ai’s R-universe does. Therefore, we will add a new repository and this package to the config.
• stringi - CRAN does contain this package, but at a higher version. We determine we can upgrade to the latest version, therefore can simply add the package to the config file.

After making these changes, we get the following config file:

rproject.toml

# this config was migrated from renv.lock on 2025-05-22T00:00:00+00:00[Etc/UTC]
[project]
name = "renv-demo"
r_version = "4.4"

repositories = [
    { alias = "CRAN", url = "https://cran.rstudio.com" },
    { alias = "a2-ai", url = "https://a2-ai.r-universe.dev" },
]

dependencies = [
    { name = "glue", repository = "CRAN" },
    { name = "cli", url = "https://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/Archive/cli/cli_3.6.3.tar.gz" },
    "osinfo",
    "stringi",
]