drat::addRepo() does not persist across R sessions and does not work in .Rprofile

[ablack3]

Starting from a new R session I can add a repo using drat::add_repo() as expected.

getOption("repos")
#>                        CRAN 
#> "https://cran.rstudio.com/" 
#> attr(,"RStudio")
#> [1] TRUE
drat::addRepo("OHDSI")
getOption("repos")
#>                            CRAN                           OHDSI 
#>     "https://cran.rstudio.com/" "https://OHDSI.github.io/drat/" 
#> attr(,"RStudio")
#> [1] TRUE

However when I restart R I would expect the repo to remain but it appears to be removed.

# After restarting R
getOption("repos")
#>                        CRAN 
#> "https://cran.rstudio.com/" 
#> attr(,"RStudio")
#> [1] TRUE

I added the following code to my .Rprofile in my user home directory

message("Running .Rprofile for user")
drat::addRepo("OHDSI")
message(paste("Repos are:", paste(getOption("repos"), collapse = ";   ")))

When I restart R I see

#> Restarting R session...

#> Running .Rprofile for user
#> Repos are: @CRAN@;   https://OHDSI.github.io/drat/

But when I check the repos option I don't see the new repo.

getOption("repos")
#>                        CRAN 
#> "https://cran.rstudio.com/" 
#> attr(,"RStudio")
#> [1] TRUE

I'm I correct that this behavior is unexpected? How should I add a repo that persists across R sessions? Why does running getOption("repos") in .Rprofile show the repo when running it interactively does not?

Thanks!

[rogerssam]

Hi Adam, see this issue.

If you don't explicitly set the CRAN repo, it appears that Rstudio overwrites it on load. So you will need to set both repos explicitly in your .Rprofile file e.g.

options(repos = c(CRAN="https://cloud.r-project.org/"))    # Preferred CRAN mirror
drat::addRepo("OHDSI")

Then the OHDSI repo should persist across sessions.