Warning: Error in ggplot2::geom_boxplot: Problem while converting geom to grob.

[AndiMunteanu]

System details

Browser Version: Google Chrome Version 124.0.6367.62

Output of sessionInfo():

# sessionInfo() output goes here
R version 4.3.3 (2024-02-29 ucrt)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows 11 x64 (build 22631)

Matrix products: default


locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=Romanian_Romania.1252  LC_CTYPE=Romanian_Romania.1252    LC_MONETARY=Romanian_Romania.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C
[5] LC_TIME=Romanian_Romania.1252

time zone: Europe/Bucharest
tzcode source: internal

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

other attached packages:
[1] rlang_1.1.3   shiny_1.8.1.1

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] gtable_0.3.4      jsonlite_1.8.8    dplyr_1.1.4       compiler_4.3.3    crayon_1.5.2      promises_1.2.1    tidyselect_1.2.1  Rcpp_1.0.12      
 [9] unigd_0.1.1       later_1.3.2       jquerylib_0.1.4   systemfonts_1.0.6 scales_1.3.0      textshaping_0.3.7 fastmap_1.1.1     mime_0.12
[17] ggplot2_3.5.1     R6_2.5.1          labeling_0.4.3    generics_0.1.3    tibble_3.2.1      munsell_0.5.1     bslib_0.7.0       pillar_1.9.0
[25] utf8_1.2.4        cachem_1.0.8      httpuv_1.6.15     sass_0.4.9        memoise_2.0.1     cli_3.6.2         withr_3.0.0       magrittr_2.0.3
[33] digest_0.6.35     grid_4.3.3        xtable_1.8-4      lifecycle_1.0.4   vctrs_0.6.5       glue_1.7.0        farver_2.1.1      ragg_1.3.0
[41] httpgd_2.0.1      fansi_1.0.6       colorspace_2.1-0  tools_4.3.3       pkgconfig_2.0.3   htmltools_0.5.8  

Example application or steps to reproduce the problem

# Minimal, self-contained example app code goes here
ui <- shiny::fluidPage(
    shiny::h1("Test"),
    shiny::plotOutput("boxplot")
)

server <- function(input, output, session) {
    output$boxplot <- shiny::renderPlot({
        df <- data.frame(timepoint = rep("tp0", 100), gene_expression = runif(100))
        ggplot2::ggplot(
            data = df,
            ggplot2::aes(
                x = timepoint,
                y = gene_expression)
        ) + ggplot2::geom_boxplot()
    })
}

Describe the problem in detail

Hello! I am encountering some issues in generating shiny apps that contain boxplots created by ggplot2. By running the example provided above, I get the following error:

Warning: Error in ggplot2::geom_boxplot: Problem while converting geom to grob.
i Error occurred in the 1st layer.
Caused by error:
! C stack usage  1916488 is too close to the limit
  185: <Anonymous>
  184: signalCondition
  183: signal_abort
  182: rlang::abort
  181: cli::cli_abort
  180: value[[3L]]
  179: tryCatchOne
  178: tryCatchList
  177: tryCatch
  176: try_fetch
  175: by_layer
  174: ggplot_gtable.ggplot_built
  172: print.ggplot
  167: func
  165: f
  164: Reduce
  155: do
  154: hybrid_chain
  126: drawPlot
  112: <reactive:plotObj>
   96: drawReactive
   83: renderFunc
   82: output$boxplot
    1: shiny::runApp
Input to asJSON(keep_vec_names=TRUE) is a named vector. In a future version of jsonlite, this option will not be supported, and named vectors will be tra.

When I run the traceback() function, I get the following output

11: execCallbacks(timeoutSecs, all, loop$id)
10: run_now(timeoutMs/1000, all = FALSE)
9: service(timeout)
8: serviceApp()
7: ..stacktracefloor..(serviceApp())
6: withCallingHandlers(expr, error = doCaptureStack)
5: domain$wrapSync(expr)
4: promises::with_promise_domain(createStackTracePromiseDomain(),
       expr)
3: captureStackTraces({
       while (!.globals$stopped) {
           ..stacktracefloor..(serviceApp())
       }
   })
2: ..stacktraceoff..(captureStackTraces({
       while (!.globals$stopped) {
           ..stacktracefloor..(serviceApp())
       }
   }))
1: shiny::runApp("shiny_apps//dummy_tests/")

I should mention that this error occurs only on Windows, if I switch to linux, the app works just fine. Also, if I change geom_boxplot with geom_violin, the error disappears.
The plot-generating code works just fine outside the shiny reactive context.

Any help to solve this issue would be very much appreciated!
Thank you!!