Setting work directory in knitr using opts_chunk$set(root.dir = …) doesn't work

Question

My R project is structured like a package with directories /R, /vignettes, /data etc. In one of my Rmd docs in /vignettes

Answer 1

Where you have an R project with nested subfolders, so that the .Rproj and .Rmd files are located in different folders, you can use the command rprojroot::find_rstudio_root_file() to find and set the working directory to the Project's main folder during Kniting (instead of the folder containing the rMarkdown code file).

So at a minimum use the following:

```{r setup}

knitr::opts_knit$set(root.dir = rprojroot::find_rstudio_root_file())

```

inside the setup chunk.

See also Automatically finding the path of current R project in R Studio and https://support.rstudio.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/220826588-Working-directory-in-R-Notebooks.