rvisual-studiovisual-studio-codevisual-studio-2012

Installing R for VSCode issues (R LSP)


I am trying to use Visual Studio for R for the first time, and am having a hard time starting. I have installed VSCode as a binary on my Windows machine (needed because of corporate machine). My R executables are in my documents folder (also because I'm on a corporate machine). I have downloaded R and R Debugger extensions in VSCode. *I could not find R LSP Client, even though tutorials from 2020 showed that it was necessary. I have installed languageserver in my R client, and have also done pip install radian.

My settings.json looks like this:

"r.rpath.windows": "C:\\Users\\XXXXX\\Documents\\R\\R-4.0.3\\bin\\x64\\R.exe",
    "r.bracketedPaste": true,
    "r.rterm.windows": "C:\\Users\\XXXXX\\AppData\\Local\\Packages\\PythonSoftwareFoundation.Python.3.9_qbz5n2kfra8p0\\LocalCache\\local-packages\\Python39\\Scripts\\radian.exe", 
"r.lsp.debug": true,
"r.lsp.diagnostics": true,
    "r.rterm.option": [
        "--no-save",
        "--no-restore",
        "--r-binary=C:\\Users\\XXXX\\Documents\\R\\R-4.0.3\\bin\\x64\\R.exe"
    ]

Somehow each time I execute code, it shows:

[Running] Rscript "c:\Users\XXXX\code\R\tempCodeRunnerFile.R"
'Rscript' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

What am I doing wrong? This is my first time using VSCode, and I've tried looking across multiple stack overflow questions and URLs to no avail. Thanks in advance for your help!


Note--see comments in solution, but I ended up copying radian.exe into a new folder and resetting the path there in the json file. And importantly, in VSCode, you cannot use Ctrl+Alt+N for R. You must use Alt+Enter


Solution

  • Step 1: Ensure R is setup right:

    In your JSON settings, change r.rpath.windows and --r-binary from

    "C:\\Users\\XXXXX\\Documents\\R\\R-4.0.3\\bin\\x64\\R.exe"

    to

    "C:\\Users\\XXXXX\\Documents\\R\\R-4.0.3\\bin\\R.exe"

    (That is, drop the \\x64--and don't worry, VSCode should still open 64-bit R even with these changes).

    Step 2: Fix the issue of running an R Script from the Editor:

    In your JSON settings, add the following line:

     "r.alwaysUseActiveTerminal": true,
    

    Step 3: Fix the Radian path

    Double check your path location for Radian under r.rterm.windows. Try changing it to:

    "C:\\Users\\XXXXX\\AppData\\Local\\Microsoft\\WindowsApps\\PythonSoftwareFoundation.Python.3.9_qbz5n2kfra8p0\\radian.exe"

    After that, save the changes and then restart VSCode.

    Update Upon getting a new PC and trying to re-setup up radian in VSCode, I kept encountering the error:

    "The term 'radian' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program."

    I confirmed radian was installed correctly by inputting the entire path into PowerShell directly:

    & "C:\Users\coip\miniconda3\Scripts\radian.exe"
    

    which meant that VSCode wasn't recognizing that location as a PATH; so I added the following lines to my settings.json in VSCode and that fixed the issue:

    {
        "terminal.integrated.env.windows": {
            "PATH": "${env:PATH};C:\\Users\\coip\\miniconda3\\Scripts"
        }
    }