Rstudio specific issue with the tcltk package

Question

I am trying to compile an interactive code that prompts for user input. I used the tcltk package for various dialog boxes and everything seemed to work fine, until it stopped working today. It should be noted that a) I did not change anything in terms of configuration and b) it only stopped working in RStudio but it still work in R.

Let's say I use the following code for example:

library(tcltk)
a <-tkmessageBox(title = "Remove stuff from dataset",
                message = "Would you like to remove stuff from dataset?",
                icon = "info", type = "yesno")

Originally a dialog box would open with a yes no question, however since today RStudio just gets stuck and I need to force close it.
Tried restarting my computer but it didn't help.

I am running RStudio ver 1.0.143 on win 10 with R ver 3.4 64bit

Would appreciate any help because I am really at a lose as to why it would suddenly stop working.

Answer 1

Testing locally, it appears like this is indeed some kind of bad interaction between RStudio and R 3.4.0 on Windows. That is, for me, your code:

• Works fine with RStudio v1.0.134 + R 3.3.3,
• Hangs with RStudio v1.0.134 + R 3.4.0.

I'll file an issue on the RStudio side and hopefully they'll be able to figure out what's going on.