Remote Access

Both Vim/Neovim and R on the remote machine

The easiest way to run R in a remote machine is to log into the remote device through ssh, start Neovim, and run R in a Neovim's terminal (the default). You will only need both Vim (or Neovim) and R configured as usual in the remote machine.

Only R on the remote machine

However, if you need to start either Neovim or Vim on the local machine and run R in the remote machine, then, a lot of additional configuration is required to enable full communication between Vim and R because by default both Nvim-R and nvimcom only accept TCP connections from the local host, and, R saves temporary files in the /tmp directory of the machine where it is running. To make the communication between local Vim and remote R possible, the remote R has to know the IP address of local machine and one remote directory must be mounted locally. Below is an example of how to achieve this goal.

1. Setup the remote machine to accept ssh login from the local machine without a password (search the command ssh-copy-id over the Internet to discover how to do it).

2. Edit your ~/.Rprofile on the remote machine (recommended):

options(nvimcom.verbose = 2)
library(colorout)

At the local machine:

• Make the directory ~/.remoteR:

  mkdir ~/.remoteR

• Create the shell script ~/bin/mountR with the following contents, and make it executable (of course, replace remotelogin and remotehost with valid values for your case):

  #!/bin/sh
  sshfs remotelogin@remotehost:/home/remotelogin/.cache/Nvim-R ~/.remoteR

• Create the shell script ~/bin/sshR with the following contents, and make it executable (replace remotelogin and remotehost with the real values):

  #!/bin/sh
  
  LOCAL_MOUNT_POINT=$NVIMR_COMPLDIR
  REMOTE_CACHE_DIR=$NVIMR_REMOTE_COMPLDIR
  REMOTE_LOGIN_HOST=remotelogin@remotehost
  
  NVIM_IP_ADDRESS=$(hostname -I)
  REMOTE_DIR_IS_MOUNTED=$(df | grep $LOCAL_MOUNT_POINT)
  
  if [ "x$REMOTE_DIR_IS_MOUNTED" = "x" ]
  then
      echo "RWarn: Remote directory '$REMOTE_CACHE_DIR' not mounted. Quit Vim and start it again.\002"
      sshfs $REMOTE_LOGIN_HOST:$REMOTE_CACHE_DIR $LOCAL_MOUNT_POINT
      sync
      exit 153
  fi
  
  if [ "x$NVIMR_PORT" = "x" ]
  then
      PSEUDOTERM='-T'
  else
      PSEUDOTERM='-t'
  fi
  
  ssh $PSEUDOTERM $REMOTE_LOGIN_HOST \
    "NVIMR_TMPDIR=$REMOTE_CACHE_DIR/tmp \
    NVIMR_COMPLDIR=$REMOTE_CACHE_DIR \
    NVIMR_ID=$NVIMR_ID \
    NVIMR_SECRET=$NVIMR_SECRET \
    R_DEFAULT_PACKAGES=$R_DEFAULT_PACKAGES \
    NVIM_IP_ADDRESS=$NVIM_IP_ADDRESS \
    NVIMR_PORT=$NVIMR_PORT R $*"

• Add the following lines to your vimrc:

  let R_app = '/home/locallogin/bin/sshR'
  let R_cmd = '/home/locallogin/bin/sshR'
  let R_compldir = '/home/locallogin/.remoteR
  let R_remote_compldir = '/home/remotelogin/.cache/Nvim-R'
  let R_local_R_library_dir = '/path/to/local/R/library' " where nvimcom is installed

  or, if using init.lua:

  vim.g.R_app = '/home/locallogin/bin/sshR'
  vim.g.R_cmd = '/home/locallogin/bin/sshR'
  vim.g.R_compldir = '/home/locallogin/.remoteR'
  vim.g.R_remote_compldir = '/home/remotelogin/.cache/Nvim-R'
  vim.g.R_local_R_library_dir = '/path/to/local/R/library' -- where nvimcom is installed

• Mount the remote directory:

  ~/bin/mountR

• Start Neovim (or Vim), and start R. Nvimcom should be automatically installed on the remote machine.

• If nvimcom is not get automatically installed, you will have to manually, build nvimcom, copy the source to the remote machine, access the remote machine, and install the package. Example:

  cd /tmp
  R CMD build /path/to/Nvim-R/R/nvimcom
  scp nvimcom_0.9-149.tar.gz remotelogin@remotehost:/tmp
  ssh remotelogin@remotehost
  cd /tmp
  R CMD INSTALL nvimcom_0.9-149.tar.gz

Alternative: vimcmdline

Running R on a remote machine will make a lot of data to be transferred through a TCP connection between the R package nvimcom and the application nvimrserver run by Nvim-R. If your connection is not fast enough or its latency is too high, you could consider using vimcmdline or a similar plugin. Of course, none of NvimR's features that depend on information on R's workspace will be available.

Below is an example for init.lua of how to configure vimcmdline for accessing R remotely:

vim.g.cmdline_app = {
    r = 'ssh -t user@remote-machine R --no-save',
}

Most of Nvim-R's key bindings call functions that send code to R, and, because they will not be used, it is better to disable them:

vim.g.R_user_maps_only = 1

Finally, you may want to enable custom actions in vimcmdline (see cmdline_actions at doc/vimcmdline.txt).