[jasonpbecker]

I agree, but this stuff is getting better. I'm actually considering breaking away from the Rocker-derived stuff because the images get so big I'm pretty sure I could maintain a faster build myself. Problem is I haven't used R locally in Linux for a long time and the split off between things in the OS package manager and R can be a bit tricky with dependency management.

packrat has helped a lot with version control of packages, but it still doesn't quite feel like the right solution.

I've been really impressed in the last 5 years how far R has come in these areas though, so like you I keep coming back. By the time I start getting over the learning curve other places, R seems to have developed better tooling for what I want to accomplish anyway and I can come back and right cleaner, clearer, better software faster in R.