Anatomy of a Lockfile

renv uses a lockfile to capture the state of your library at some point in time. It is stored as a collection of records, with different records defining:

• The version of renv used when generating the lockfile;
• The version of R used in that project;
• The R repositories that were active when the lockfile was created;
• Package records defining each R package, their version, and their installation source.

Here is an example lockfile, including the packages markdown and mime:

{
  "R": {
    "Version": "4.0.1",
    "Repositories": [
      {
        "Name": "CRAN",
        "URL": "https://cloud.r-project.org"
      }
    ]
  },
  "Packages": {
    "markdown": {
      "Package": "markdown",
      "Version": "1.0",
      "Source": "Repository",
      "Repository": "CRAN",
      "Hash": "4584a57f565dd7987d59dda3a02cfb41"
    },
    "mime": {
      "Package": "mime",
      "Version": "0.7",
      "Source": "Repository",
      "Repository": "CRAN",
      "Hash": "908d95ccbfd1dd274073ef07a7c93934"
    }
  }
}

The function renv::snapshot() is used to create this lockfile, and by default writes these records to the file renv.lock. Later, if you need to re-install the specific package versions as recorded in renv.lock, you can use renv::restore().