Mason fails to install `r-languageserver` due to `bspm` conflict on Ubuntu

[danielvartan]

Hi there,

I'm not entirely sure I understand the issue, but it seems that Mason fails to install r-languageserver because of how the bspm package bridges R and the Ubuntu system package manager. This can interfere with Mason’s installation process, and users should be aware of it.

Installing R packages on Ubuntu/Linux can be tricky due to the interaction between R’s package system and APT (the Advanced Package Tool). To help with this, there’s a special repository that provides Ubuntu binaries and a package called bspm, which allows install.packages() to use APT behind the scenes.

The problem is that a default R installation in Ubuntu automatically loads bspm via the system-wide .Rprofile.site file (usually located at /etc/R/Rprofile.site), and this can conflict with how Mason installs LSPs.

Temporary fix:

Open /etc/R/Rprofile.site as Administrator and comment out the bspm calls before running :MasonInstall r-languageserver in Neovim. For example:

# suppressMessages(bspm::enable())
# options(bspm.version.check=FALSE)

I hope this helps.

Thank you for this great plugin!