Fix It

Three problems have come up across the course this week. None of them mean you did anything wrong, and none of them mean your computer is broken. Each one below has what you would see, what to do about it, and how to tell it worked.

The first one applies to everybody. The other two only matter if you have actually run into them.

1. Do this one even if nothing looks broken

What you might see: you click Run Cell above a gray code box, and strange characters appear around your code in the console, something like [200~ and [201~. Or the next cell you run comes out stuck onto the previous one and both run at once. Or the console just behaves oddly and you cannot say why.

Why: your course folder came with one setting switched on that should have been off. It tells VS Code to send code in a format a different R console understands, and the plain R console we use does not. The setting was wrong in the course template until 8 September, so everyone who set up their workspace before then has it.

What to do:

  1. Open Settings. Hold Ctrl and press , on Windows, or hold Cmd and press , on a Mac.
  2. At the top of the Settings page there are tabs: User and Workspace. Click Workspace. This matters. Workspace is the tab holding the settings that arrived with your course folder.
  3. In the search box at the top, type bracketed.
  4. One result appears, R: Bracketed Paste, with a tick box. Untick it.
  5. Close the Settings tab. There is nothing to save; VS Code saves it for you.

Now give yourself a clean console, because R may still be waiting halfway through a command it never finished. Find the terminal panel at the bottom of VS Code and click the bin icon to close it. The next time you run a cell, a fresh one opens.

How to tell it worked: run a cell. Your code appears in the console with nothing extra wrapped around it, and it runs on its own rather than dragging the previous cell along.

2. “Git: Clone” is not in the Command Palette

What you would see: you press Ctrl+Shift+P (or Cmd+Shift+P on a Mac), type Git: Clone, and it is not on the list at all. Not greyed out. Just absent.

Why: VS Code hides that command when it cannot find Git on your computer. Nine times in ten Git is installed perfectly well, but VS Code was already open when you installed it. VS Code checks for programs once, when it starts, so anything installed while it was running stays invisible to it.

What to do, in this order:

  1. Quit VS Code completely, then open it again. On Windows, close every VS Code window. On a Mac, press Cmd+Q, because closing the window leaves VS Code running. Do not use Reload Window; it is not the same thing and will not fix this.
  2. Look for the command again. For most people it is now there and you are done.
  3. Still missing? Check whether Git is really installed. In VS Code open Terminal, New Terminal and type git --version. A version number means Git is fine.
  4. On Windows, if that says Git is not recognized, run the Git installer again from git-scm.com. On the page asking about your PATH, choose the middle option, Git from the command line and also from 3rd-party software. The Git Bash only option hides Git from VS Code.
  5. On a Mac, if that says Git is not recognized, open Terminal and run git --version. A box may offer to install the developer tools. Click Install and wait for it to finish, then quit and reopen VS Code.

If you need to get on with your work right now, you do not have to wait for the palette. In a terminal inside VS Code, move to the folder where you want your project and run git clone followed by the address you copied from GitHub. That does exactly what the menu command does.

How to tell it worked: Git: Clone appears in the Command Palette when you type it.

3. R says there is no package called ‘v2v’

What you would see: the install seemed to work, with a long list of packages reporting success, and then library(v2v) answers there is no package called 'v2v'. Looking back up the output there are lines saying Warning: cannot remove prior installation of package and Warning: restored.

Why: during the install R offered to update a long list of other packages, and choosing All causes this. Some of those packages were in use by R at that moment, and Windows will not replace a file that is already open. Those packages quietly went back to the version you had, and the course package then refused to build because one of them was too old. The word restored in that output means put back, not repaired. This mainly affects Windows.

If your setup check came back green, ignore this section. Nothing is wrong.

What to do:

  1. Quit VS Code completely. This is the step that matters, because VS Code is what was holding those files open. On a Mac use Cmd+Q.

  2. Open R on its own. On Windows, open the Start menu and look for R x64. On a Mac, open the R application from your Applications folder.

  3. In that R window, run this line and let it finish:

    install.packages(c("rlang", "cli", "curl", "xfun", "fs"))

  4. Then run this one. The ending matters, so copy the whole line:

    remotes::install_github("AURA-Lab-SIUE/v2v-r", upgrade = "never")

    upgrade = "never" is what stops R offering that list again.

  5. Then check it loaded:

    library(v2v)
setup()

  6. Close R and reopen VS Code.

How to tell it worked: library(v2v) returns without complaint, and setup() prints green ticks down the Required R packages list.

None of this fixed it

Send me the exact wording of what you see rather than a description of it. A screenshot of the whole console is ideal. Office hours are Tuesday and Thursday, 12:30 to 1:45 and 3:30 to 5:00, in Dunham Hall 1017, and you are welcome to bring the laptop.

The longer guides have more detail if you want it: Install R, Install VS Code, Install the v2v package, and Getting Started with GitHub.