[Rcpp-devel] R Initialization with RInside

[John Buonagurio]

Hi Dirk, 

Thank you for the quick reply. I have all of the examples working and my 
application already runs well on my build system, at this point I'm just 
trying to figure out how to make everything redistributable. Your 
qtdensity sample was a great help - especially the 
QtDensity::filterFile() function to get Qt SVG graphics working. 

The fundamental issue is that I want the application binary and 
associated R installation to be fully portable, and as such I can't 
depend on a specific value of R_HOME. It isn't strictly necessary to 
have the setup this way so this is not a critical issue -- theoretically 
the program should work with R 2.11.0+ and I can just use my specific 
package versions after R startup using .libPaths() -- but it would just 
be nice to not rely on a user's specific R configuration nor ask to 
install R separately. 

Your response and my quick review of RInside::initialize(...) in 
RInside.cpp confirms that this is just not supported and I really should 
be using R_HOME... Looks like I'll have to add my own check for 
.Renviron to set R_HOME analogous to what you did in RInside 0.2.9: use 
R's "get_R_HOME()" to query it, #ifdef WIN32 and if R_HOME is NULL. 

Thanks again for the great software,
John

-----Original Message-----
From: Dirk Eddelbuettel [mailto:edd at debian.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 3:40 PM
To: John Buonagurio
Cc: rcpp-devel at lists.r-forge.r-project.org
Subject: Re: [Rcpp-devel] R Initialization with RInside


John,

[ Reindenting this to 80cols ]

Welcome, and thanks for posting here.

On 12 June 2013 at 19:13, John Buonagurio wrote:
| Hi all,
| 
|
| I am trying to package a minimal R environment with an RInside 
| application, without requiring R already be installed and without 
| overwriting global

RInside cannot work without R installed.  End of story.

| environment variables such as R_HOME in order to run the application. 
| I am

RInside (particularly on Windows which is an OS without an established tradition of where things get installed) will probably not work without R (see above) and knowledge of R_HOME (which is "read-only")

| currently developing under Windows though I will ultimately release 
| other versions - hopefully this does not complicate things too much.
|  
| I guess I am trying to understand the startup mechanism used by 
| RInside  compared to Rgui, Rterm, R and Rcmd. Per ?Startup:
| 
|
| "Unless --no-environ was given on the command line, R searches for 
| site and user files to process for setting environment variables. The 
| name of the site file is the one pointed to by the environment 
| variable R_ENVIRON; if this is unset, 'R_HOME/etc/Renviron.site' is 
| used (if it exists, which it does not in a 'factory-fresh' 
| installation). The name of the user file can be specified by the 
| R_ENVIRON_USER environment variable; if this is unset, the files 
| searched for are '.Renviron' in the current or in the user's home directory (in that order)."

That is from R, and RInside needs to find R. See above.

| So, I understand that I should be able to put a .Renviron file in the 
| current executing directory of the application and set R_HOME and 
| R_LIBS to a local, relative path. This works great for running the R 
| interpreter, but the RInside R instance doesn't recognize it - program 
| fails as it can't find the base package. Is there a supported way around this?

Setting R_HOME helps.

| Basically the reason I need to do this: I've put together a spatial 
| simulation tool which is hacked together using various components of 
| Qt,  QGIS and GDAL, and calls various R packages via RInside for some 
| operations. I need to control the R version to keep everything working 
| properly.

I strongly recommend you get the Qt-based example working first, and then expand from here.

| Very much appreciate your suggestions - hoping someone has experienced 
| a similar problem.

Sure. Which is why we add a minimal working example to the package.

Hth,  Dirk

 
| Thanks,
| John
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--
Dirk Eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org | http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com