# Project profiles

## Introduction

Starting with `renv 0.13.0`, it is possible to activate and switch between different profiles associated with a project. A profile can be thought of as a different mode in which a project is used. For example:

- A “development” profile might be used when developing and testing a project,
- A “production” profile might be used for production deployments,
- A “shiny” profile might be used when running the Shiny application.

At its heart, activating or using a particular profile implies using a different set of paths for the project library and lockfile. With this, it is possible to associate different packages, and different dependencies, with different workflows in a single project using renv.

## Usage

By default, renv projects use the “default” profile, which implies that library and lockfile paths are set in the typical way. To activate a particular profile, use:

    renv::activate(profile = "dev")

This creates a profile called `"dev"`, and sets it as the default for the project, so that newly-launched R sessions will operate using the `"dev"` profile. After setting this and re-launching R, you should see that the project library and lockfile paths are resolved within the `renv/profiles/dev` folder from the project root.

Alternatively, if you want to activate a particular profile for an R session without setting it as the default for new R sessions, you can use:

    Sys.setenv(RENV_PROFILE = "dev")

and renv will automatically use that profile as appropriate when computing library and lockfile paths. Similarly, from the command line, you might enforce the use of a particular profile in an renv project with:

    export RENV_PROFILE=dev

With that set, renv would default to using the `"dev"` profile for any newly-launched R sessions within renv projects.

To activate the “default” profile used by a project, use:

    renv::activate(profile = NULL)

## Managing profile-specific dependencies

Profile-specific package dependencies can be declared within the project’s top-level `DESCRIPTION` file. For example, to declare that the shiny profile depends on the shiny and tidyverse packages:

    Config/renv/profiles/shiny/dependencies: shiny, tidyverse

If you’d like to also declare that these packages should be installed from a custom remote (analogous to the `Remotes` field for the default profile), you can define those remotes with a separate field:

    Config/renv/profiles/shiny/remotes: rstudio/shiny, tidyverse/tidyverse

These remotes will then be respected in calls to `renv::install()`.

The packages and remotes must be specified separately, as renv cannot determine the package name associated with a particular remote without explicitly resolving that remote. Remote resolution normally requires a web request, which renv tries to avoid in “regular” dependency discovery.

If you’d prefer that only the packages enumerated in this field are used, you can opt-in to using `"explicit"` snapshots, and leave the `Imports`, `Depends` and `Suggests` fields blank:

    renv::settings$snapshot.type("explicit")

When set, only the dependencies listed in the project `DESCRIPTION` file will be used when the lockfile is generated. See `?renv::snapshot` for more details.