cant quite get rstudio working in the image but its good enough and works.

singleuser/Dockerfile

@@ -12,6 +12,75 @@ RUN apt-get update && \
 
 USER jovyan
 
-RUN conda install rstudio
 RUN python3 -m pip install --no-cache jupyterhub==$JUPYTERHUB_VERSION nbresuse jupyter-rsession-proxy
 RUN conda install -c conda-forge fenics
+
+USER root
+
+# R pre-requisites
+RUN apt-get update && \
+    apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
+    fonts-dejavu \
+    tzdata \
+    gfortran \
+    gcc && \
+    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
+
+USER $NB_UID
+
+# R packages
+RUN conda install --quiet --yes \
+    'r-base=3.5.1' \
+    'r-irkernel=0.8*' \
+    'r-plyr=1.8*' \
+    'r-devtools=1.13*' \
+    'r-tidyverse=1.2*' \
+    'r-shiny=1.2*' \
+    'r-rmarkdown=1.11*' \
+    'r-forecast=8.2*' \
+    'r-rsqlite=2.1*' \
+    'r-reshape2=1.4*' \
+    'r-nycflights13=1.0*' \
+    'r-caret=6.0*' \
+    'r-rcurl=1.95*' \
+    'r-crayon=1.3*' \
+    'r-randomforest=4.6*' \
+    'r-htmltools=0.3*' \
+    'r-sparklyr=0.9*' \
+    'r-htmlwidgets=1.2*' \
+    'r-hexbin=1.27*' && \
+    conda clean -tipsy && \
+    fix-permissions $CONDA_DIR
+
+RUN conda install rstudio && \
+    fix-permissions $CONDA_DIR
+
+USER root
+
+RUN apt-get update && \
+    apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
+        libapparmor1 \
+        libedit2 \
+        lsb-release \
+        psmisc \
+        libssl1.0.0 \
+        ;
+
+# You can use rsession from rstudio's desktop package as well.
+ENV RSTUDIO_PKG=rstudio-server-1.0.136-amd64.deb
+
+RUN wget -q http://download2.rstudio.org/${RSTUDIO_PKG}
+RUN dpkg -i ${RSTUDIO_PKG}
+RUN rm ${RSTUDIO_PKG}
+RUN apt-get clean && \
+    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
+
+RUN python3 -m pip install jupyterhub jupyter-rsession-proxy \
+  && jupyter labextension install jupyterlab-server-proxy
+USER jovyan
+
+RUN python3 -m pip install git+https://github.com/jupyterhub/jupyter-rsession-proxy
+
+# The desktop package uses /usr/lib/rstudio/bin
+ENV PATH="${PATH}:/usr/lib/rstudio-server/bin"
+ENV LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/lib/R/lib:/lib:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu:/usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-amd64/jre/lib/amd64/server:/opt/conda/lib/R/lib"