There are ongoing outbreaks of mpox globally. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is so far the worst hit with a total of 7,851 cases and 384 deaths reported between January 1 and May 26, 2024 ¹ . Before 2022, there were few reports of sustained mpox transmission globally.

Throughout the Epiverse project, we use the renv R package to ensure reproducibility of the training materials and the pipelines we are providing. But we sometimes get reports from users who struggle to rebuild the environment and run the code. In this post, we dissect the source of these issues, explain why in reality renv is not at fault, and how this is caused by the inherent complexity of reproducibility.