Support packages (libraries) in R

[gaocegege]

Renjin supports some of CRAN and BioConductor R libraries, Processing.R could benefit from it.

ref the post in forum

As for libraries, I did a feasibility study. Renjin is used in Processing.R as the backend to interpret R code in JVM. Documentation in renjin.org shows differences about packages between GNU R and renjin.

It supports some of CRAN and BioConductor R libraries and I want to integrate those libraries into Processing.R in GSoC. But I'm not sure whether those packages could be installed in runtime or ahead of time.

BTW I think Jython supports those libraries which do not require C compilation, although I do not have the experience on it.

[jeremydouglass]

@gaocegege --

What are some top CRAN / BioConductor R packages that you would be interested in testing (or in having someone test for you)? Ideally these would be popular packages, low level (not a lot of dependencies), not have their own graphical outputs (for simplicity, and not to overlap with Processing), and be something that Processing users might want to use .

For example, I might be interested in:

• Bioconductor -- see: Download stats for Bioconductor software packages:
  • graph
  • pcaMethods
• CRAN -- see: The most popular R packages or Top 20 R packages by popularity:
  • dplyr
  • stringr
  • stringi
  • lubridate

[jeremydouglass]

A preliminary look at Renjin package listings shows that they automatically test -- however they don't provide a single listing of packages that pass, and the packages that I chose above didn't pass testing (possibly because they are dependency-heavy or C/++ optimized), so we need to be systematic about searching or pick well-documented examples.

• graph: This package can be loaded by Renjin but there was an error compiling C/FORTRAN sources and 38 out 51 tests failed.
• pcaMethods: This package can be loaded by Renjin but there was an error compiling C/FORTRAN sources and 18 out 28 tests failed.
• dplyr: This package can be loaded by Renjin but there was an error compiling C/FORTRAN sources and 35 out 62 tests failed.
• stringi: This package can be loaded by Renjin but there was an error compiling C/FORTRAN sources and 48 out 49 tests failed.
• stringr: This package can be loaded by Renjin but all tests failed.
• lubridate: This package can be loaded by Renjin but all tests failed.

By contrast, here is a package in a Renjin-specific version that passes all tests. We might use it for our preliminary testing of whether importing works:

• org.renjin.cran:plyr. Use it with library('org.renjin.cran:plyr')

[jeremydouglass]

I've posted a question about listings of available test-passing renjin packages here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/renjin-dev/rrLM4wo3by8

[gaocegege]

Yeah, there are some packages which pass all the tests. And I agree that we could use them to test whether it works.

As for those packages which fails some test cases, I think we should dive into the packages and have a try. And if there are some important libraries, maybe we could help renjin to implement them in JVM. Then we could use it in our mode.