RStudio
Connect is a publication platform for deploying content built in R
and Python to share with a broad audience. R users may want to develop
content (like Shiny
applications or RMarkdown documents)
using renv and then publish that content to RStudio
Connect. This is a supported pattern where renv is used to
manage the local project environment and then RStudio Connect recreates
and manages the deployment environment.
The RStudio IDE includes a button for push-button deployment to
RStudio Connect: 
When this option is used to deploy content to RStudio Connect, a
manifest file is automatically generated and sent to RStudio Connect
describing the project environment. This manifest file will reflect the
project environment create and managed by renv. The
renv generated .Rprofile file should
not be included in deployments to RStudio Connect.
When publishing content to RStudio Connect programatically, it is
necessary to generate a manifest file describing the project
environment. This can be done with the writeManifest()
function from the rsconnect
package. When using renv, the only thing that needs to be
considered is that rsconnect should be installed and
executed from within the renv environment so that it
recognizes the local project library when generating the manifest file.
As long as rsconnect is run from within the
renv created environment, it will capture project
dependencies from the local renv library. This can be
accomplished by opening the project in RStudio or by starting the R
session from the project root directory. The renv generated
.Rprofile file should not be included in
deployments to RStudio Connect.
RStudio Connect uses packrat to
restore project environments on the RStudio Connect server. This should
have no impact on how the user develops content for RStudio Connect. It
is not necessary for the user to use packrat instead of
renv when developing content, as the environment management
tool used locally has no impact on the tools RStudio Connect uses for
environment management. Therefore, there should be no concerns with
using renv to develop content that will be deployed to
RStudio Connect.