Add r.rpath.xxx setting

Currently the extensions vscode-r-lsp, vscode-r-debugger and the help panel from this extension each have a configuration entry where the user needs to specify the path of an R binary.

These are all “backend” usecases where alternatives like radian offer no advantages (as far as I’m aware) over the standard R executable. To make vscode+R easier to configure, I’d suggest introducing a setting r.rpath.xxx, similar to r.rterm.xxx which is supposed to be a “vanilla” R binary that can be used by the mentioned functions/packages.

Advantages include:

• Users don’t need to make the same configuration in three different places
• For developers it’s easier to implement new features that need an R process as backend (e.g. an R CMD INSTALL . task)

Disadvantages include:

• Users cannot configure different R executables for the different extensions/functions.
• Changing the settings might invalidate existing settings

As a solution to these two issues, I’d suggest introducing a new unified r.rpath.xxx setting, while still honoring the old settings (i.e. to get the R path in the lsp check r.lsp.path -> r.rterm.xxx -> read from path etc.). Even if the package/function specific settings are not specified in the package.json anymore, it is still possible to read their value from existing setting.json files.

[ManuelHentschel]

How about making these values from each OS path to like one r.path and r.term?

That would be nicer, but might cause problems for people using WSL or syncing settings between different OSs. A discussion about scoping settings by platform has been ongoing for a while now but as far as I’m aware, there is no clean solution for this yet

[randy3k]

There is a pending discussion of moving vscode-R to REditorSupport so we could merge this repo with vscode-r-lsp: https://github.com/Ikuyadeu/vscode-R/issues/98