[Rcpp-devel] Use of Rcpp Modules in a large package

[Douglas Bates]

As mentioned on the R-SIG-Mixed-Models mailing list, I have been
working for some time to express lme4 using the RcppEigen package (one
of the main motivations for creating RcppEigen) and Rcpp Modules.
Unfortunately, my tests are showing segfaults and other instances of
memory problems.  I think I have been here before with Rcpp modules.

Has anyone managed to use Rcpp Modules extensively without running
into segfaults, etc.?  In a large package like lme4, incorporating new
facilities like Eigen, there are many ways that things can go wrong
with memory allocation and freeing so I don't know that it is
necessarily the module code.  There are dozens of things that could go
wrong and debugging memory faults is difficult.  When I need to resort
to gctorture and enabling the write barrier it can take half a day to
run a simple example.