7  Positron

Author
Affiliation

Dr Randy Johnson

Hood College

Published

January 5, 2026

Introduction

  • Positron is a modern integrated development environment (IDE) for R and Python
    • Created by the same team that developed RStudio
    • Built on top of the popular Visual Studio Code editor

Features

  • There are a number of features that we will use in class
  • Many will be familiar if you have used RStudio
  • Side panes are listed along the left side of the screen
  • Editing pane is in the center
  • Output panes (e.g. variables and plots) are on the right
  • Console, terminal and other panes are at the bottom

Side Panes

  • Explorer : File navigation and management
  • Search : Search across files in a project
  • Source Control : Git integration for version control
  • Extensions : Install and manage extensions to enhance functionality
  • GitHub : Direct integration with GitHub repositories
  • Chat : AI-powered coding assistance and support (requires model configuration - GitHub Copilot is recommended for this class)

There are other panes available, including:

  • Run and Debug : Execute and debug code snippets
  • Remote Explorer : Manage remote development environments
  • Testing : Tools for running and managing tests
  • Posit Publisher : Publish and share projects