Deploy Shinylive Apps

The following prompts are modified from the original conversation in the geyser repo with Gemini. The reconstructed deploy YAML file, which should go in .github/workflows/deploy.yml is saved here as deploy.yml.

Prompts

• What files in docs/shiny can I ignore with .gitignore but make sure the shiny app will function when pushed to GitHub?
• Proceed with Option 1.
• Is .github/workflows/deploy.yml set up to publish the rest of material in the docs/ folder? Notably the html and qmd documents are not shown.

Response

If you are deploying a Shinylive app to GitHub Pages, you have two different strategies depending on how you want to handle the deployment.

---

Option 1: Using GitHub Actions (Recommended & Best Practice)

The standard and cleanest way to deploy a Shinylive app is to never commit the build directory to Git. This avoids bloating your repository with the large WebAssembly runtime (currently ~76MB).

Instead, you let GitHub Actions build the Shinylive export on-the-fly and deploy it.

1. Add this to your .gitignore:

   # Ignore all generated shinylive app files
   docs/shiny/
   

2. Setup a GitHub Action Workflow: Create a file at .github/workflows/deploy.yml with the following contents:

   name: Deploy Shinylive App
   on:
     push:
       branches: [main] # or master
   jobs:
     build-and-deploy:
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       permissions:
         contents: read
         pages: write
         id-token: write
       steps:
         - uses: actions/checkout@v4
         - uses: r-lib/actions/setup-r@v2
         - name: Install Shinylive
           run: Rscript -e "install.packages('shinylive')"
         - name: Export App
           # Copies R files to inst/connect_modules/R/ first if not in git
           run: |
             cp -r R inst/connect_modules/
             Rscript -e "shinylive::export('inst/connect_modules', 'docs/shiny', wasm_packages = FALSE)"
         - name: Upload Pages artifact
           uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v3
           with:
             path: 'docs/shiny'
         - name: Deploy to GitHub Pages
           uses: actions/deploy-pages@v4
   

Modify deploy.yml to publish the entire docs/ folder

In the previous version, only docs/shiny was uploaded.

I have updated .github/workflows/deploy.yml so that the entire docs/ directory is uploaded and published to GitHub Pages:

      - name: Upload artifact
        uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v3
        with:
          path: 'docs'  # Changed from 'docs/shiny' to publish the whole folder

Modify deploy.yml to install knitr and rmarkdown

      - name: Install Shinylive, Knitr, and Rmarkdown
        run: |
          Rscript -e "install.packages(c('shinylive', 'knitr', 'rmarkdown'))"

1. In your GitHub Repository settings, go to Settings > Pages and under Build and deployment > Source, change the setting to GitHub Actions.

---

Option 2: Committing the Export Directly (Local Build)

If you prefer not to use GitHub Actions and want to commit the build outputs directly to Git so GitHub Pages can serve them:

You cannot ignore any files inside docs/shiny (except for the 278-byte redirect page at docs/shiny/edit/index.html).

• index.html is the launcher.
• app.json contains your actual code.
• shinylive-sw.js is the service worker.
• shinylive/ contains the essential webR WebAssembly binaries (R.wasm, virtual filesystem, etc.) required to run R inside the browser.

How to optimize the file size for this option

To save 53MB of space in your Git history, you should export the app with wasm_packages = FALSE:

shinylive::export(
  appdir = "inst/connect_modules", 
  destdir = "docs/shiny", 
  wasm_packages = FALSE
)

This tells Shinylive not to download the package binaries (like ggplot2, dplyr, bslib) locally. Instead, the browser will dynamically fetch them from repo.r-wasm.org when a user opens the page. This reduces the folder size from 129MB to 76MB.

Set up Option 1

I have successfully set up Option 1 (GitHub Actions / CI-CD Deployment) for you:

1. Ignored Local Build Outputs: Added /docs/shiny/ to your .gitignore file. This ensures you won’t accidentally commit the large locally-generated Shinylive WebAssembly folder (76MB+) to your Git history.
2. Created GitHub Actions Workflow: Created the deployment workflow at .github/workflows/deploy.yml.

What happens now?

Whenever you push to the main or master branch:

1. GitHub will spin up an environment, install shinylive and other setup tools.
2. It will copy the root R/ package scripts dynamically into inst/connect_modules/R/.
3. It will export the Shinylive application with wasm_packages = FALSE directly into docs/shiny.
4. It will publish docs/shiny directly to your GitHub Pages hosting.

⚠️ Final Step Required by You

Please go to your repository on GitHub, navigate to Settings > Pages, and under Build and deployment > Source, make sure it is changed to GitHub Actions instead of “Deploy from a branch”.

What this means for your site structure

• The rest of your files in docs/ (such as docs/geyserShinyPython.html and docs/geyserShinyR.html) will be served at the root of your GitHub Pages site (e.g., https://username.github.io/geyser/geyserShinyR.html).

• The Shinylive app will be built and served inside the /shiny/ subfolder (e.g., https://username.github.io/geyser/shiny/).