Support for Positron IDE

[GitHunter0]

Please describe your feature request

Following discussion posit-dev/positron#5082 , it would be very good to have box modules import working in Positron IDE.

For example, consider the case below.

We have module1.R, module2.R and __initi__.R files, all in directory C:/project/modules/, with C:/project/ being our R working directory.

# module1.R
f1 <- function(x) return(x)

Running box::use(./module1[f1]) interactively from module2.R should work.

It currently works in RStudio but still not in Positron.

[zackarno]

I agree it would be really great if this would work in Positron. I love the box package and am also hoping to shift my work to Positron.

I see this issue is open, so I'm just posting here because after reading posit-dev/positron#5082 I wasn't sure if there was some sort of work-around users could implement.

Here's a reprex from my general set up (in case it's useful):

Reproducible Example

Project Structure

reprex_box/
├── src/
│   └── func_example.R
└── scripts/
    └── test_func_example.R

src/func_example.R

#' @export
hello_box <- function(name = "World") {
  paste0("Hello from box, ", name, "!")
}

scripts/test_func_example.R (with relative import)

# This should work with box relative imports
box::use(../src/func_example)

# Test the functions
result1 <- func_example$hello_box("Positron")
print(result1)

Observed Behavior

✅ Works: Running from terminal:

From root directory:

$ Rscript scripts/test_func_example.R
#> [1] "Hello from box, Positron!"

from script directory:

$ cd scripts
$ Rscript test_func_example.R
#> [1] "Hello from box, Positron!"

❌ Fails: Running from Positron console

When running the same code in Positron console (from active script scripts/test_func_example.R) :

box::use(../src/func_example)
#> Error: unable to load module "../src/func_example"; not found in "/Users/zackarno/Downloads/reprex_box"

rstudioapi::isAvailable()
#> [1] TRUE
rstudioapi::getActiveDocumentContext()
#> Document Context: 
#> - id:        ''
#> - path:      '/Users/zackarno/Downloads/reprex_box/scripts/test_func_example.R'
#> - contents:  <23 rows>
#> Document Selection:
#> - [22, 1] -- [22, 39]: 'rstudioapi::getActiveDocumentContext() <...>'

Session info

> sessioninfo::session_info()
─ Session info ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 setting  value
 version  R version 4.4.1 (2024-06-14)
 os       macOS 15.6.1
 system   aarch64, darwin20
 ui       X11
 language (EN)
 collate  en_US.UTF-8
 ctype    en_US.UTF-8
 tz       America/Mexico_City
 date     2025-10-06
 pandoc   NA

─ Packages ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 package     * version    date (UTC) lib source
 box           1.2.0.9000 2025-03-04 [1] [https://klmr.r-universe.dev](vscode-file://vscode-app/Applications/Positron.app/Contents/Resources/app/out/vs/code/electron-browser/workbench/workbench.html#) (R 4.4.3)
 cli           3.6.5      2025-04-23 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
 fansi         1.0.6      2023-12-08 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 glue          1.8.0      2024-09-30 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
 lifecycle     1.0.4      2023-11-07 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 pillar        1.9.0      2023-03-22 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 rlang         1.1.6      2025-04-11 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
 sessioninfo   1.2.2      2021-12-06 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 utf8          1.2.4      2023-10-22 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
 vctrs         0.6.5      2023-12-01 [2] CRAN (R 4.4.0)

 [1] /Users/zackarno/Library/R/arm64/4.4/library
 [2] /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.4-arm64/Resources/library

Positron Info

Positron Version: 2025.09.0 build 139
Code - OSS Version: 1.103.0
Commit: 30e3d0a74e09a0f6640929822cb57a326671360e
Date: 2025-08-29T18:31:36.739Z (1 mo ago)
Electron: 37.2.3
Chromium: 138.0.7204.100
Node.js: 22.17.0
V8: 13.8.500258-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 24.6.0

[klmr]

@zackarno Thanks, I’ll take a look. Unfortunately the point (3) I mentioned in the linked thread is kind of an issue. in fact, I’d assume it will cause a failure when running code from inside the built-in Positron terminal. — At least this was the case when I last tested it, but that was admittedly a year ago, maybe the behaviour of Positron was fixed in the meantime.

(I’m also unable to test in Posit Workbench, and I’m somewhat queasy about this behaving differently.)

[klmr]

I’ve re-tested this now, and scenario (3) is still returning the wrong value in up-to-date Positron. Bummer.

And I still don’t know how to handle the (fairly common) scenario where ‘rstudioapi’ isn’t installed. For now it seems that the tools:rstudio environment will always be available so I can fall back to that, but Davis’ statement that it is “not supported” is not reassuring me about its future-proofness. And this is fundamentally something that needs to be fixed in Positron. ‘box’ can only do so much.