RStudio Session Recovery: Managing .RData Persistence During Workspace Transitions

Workspace Image Recovery and Session State

RStudio manages session state by decoupling the IDE frontend from the R backend, utilizing a persistent session mechanism to restore open scripts and environment variables after a disconnect or crash. A core part of this behavior is the automatic loading of the .RData workspace image upon startup.

When transitioning between different RStudio Server versions or migrating to Posit Workbench, the interaction between the global environment persistence and the .Rprofile configuration can create conflicts. Specifically, there is a tension between the IDE's built-in session recovery and the manual control of environment state required for reproducible research.

If the "Restore .RData into workspace at startup" option is enabled in Global Options, it may override specific session initialization logic defined in the project-level configuration.

• How does RStudio prioritize the .RData restoration sequence relative to the execution of a project-specific .Rprofile?
• In what way does this priority change when moving from a standalone RStudio Server instance to a multi-session Posit Workbench environment?