As I alluded to, renv exists, but it requires a lot of development work before it is a comparably robust option for the ecosystem. Basic things like a command-line interface [0], working with non-CRAN repos [1], using an existing DESCRIPTION file [2], etc. There are many use cases where renv does not work in a corporate environment (ie not open-source all public code scenarios). Some of those issues have been open for years.

I do not believe the situation is unsolvable, but there is significant work to be done. Renv provides value today, and I will encourage everyone to use it. However, it has significant blind spots which continue to make R deployments challenging.

[0] https://github.com/rstudio/renv/issues/1055 [1] https://github.com/rstudio/renv/issues/471 [2] https://github.com/rstudio/renv/issues/233