Nix for Data Science: the rix package

{rix} is an R package that leverages Nix, a package manager focused on reproducible builds. With Nix, you can create project-specific environments with a custom version of R, its packages, and all system dependencies (e.g., GDAL). Nix ensures full reproducibility, which is crucial for research and development projects. Use cases include running web apps (e.g., Shiny, {plumber} APIs) or {targets} pipelines with a controlled R environment. Unlike {renv}, which snapshots package versions, {rix} provides an entire ecosystem snapshot, including system-level dependencies. While Nix has a steep learning curve, {rix} - simplifies creating Nix expressions, which define reproducible environments. - lets you work interactively in IDEs like RStudio or VS Code, or use Nix in CI/CD workflows. - provides helpers that make it easy to build those environments, evaluate the same code in different development environments, and finally to deploy software environments in production. Nix includes nearly all CRAN and Bioconductor packages, with the ability to install specific package versions or GitHub snapshots. Nix also includes Python, Julia (and many of their respective packages) as well as many, many other tools (up to 100’000 pieces of software as of writing). To learn more about {rix}: https://docs.ropensci.org/rix/