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rocker-org / rocker

R configurations for Docker
https://rocker-project.org
GNU General Public License v2.0
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Rstudio Desktop with UI binding #402

Closed kieran-mace closed 4 years ago

kieran-mace commented 4 years ago

I was reading this article and realized it would be possible to run a gui app within docker.

While Rstudio Server through the browser is great, I miss having the local keybindings (such as alt-tab to switch applications).

Would it be possible to create a rocker image using rstudio desktop, and allowing users to run the rstudio desktop (with its gui) on their machines?

cboettig commented 4 years ago

@kieran-mace it's possible, but far less portable, and I'm not entirely clear on the motivation (e.g. alt-tab should still switch between applications -- and you can have multiple rstudio-servers open in different tabs and your hotkeys for switching between browser tabs should work just as well). I believe RStudio desktop is built on the same css/javascript stack that server uses, and should be very much feature compatible. I believe supporting GUI app would introduce considerably more hurdles for users to setup, & would not be effective with remote servers.

If you are interested in non-RStudio GUI based interfaces, we suggest taking a look at our X11 documentation, e.g. https://github.com/rocker-org/rocker-versioned/tree/master/X11 . This works when you need it, but as you see becomes much more finicky and host-platform-specific...