[Rcpp-devel] On Developing Header Packages

[Romain Francois]

I would definitely second that. This eliminates a whole class of hard to deal with issues. 

Even Rcpp IMO should really just be header only. 

Romain

Envoyé de mon iPhone

> Le 7 avr. 2015 à 20:51, JJ Allaire <jj.allaire at gmail.com> a écrit :
> 
> I think that header-only packages (where possible) are definitely
> preferable within the R package ecosystem because it allows you to
> sidestep a lot of build configuration and runtime linking complexity.
> 
> The rub is that some libraries simply can't be made header-only,
> especially if they make use of static data. I was able to convert the
> TinyThread library to header-only by simply prefacing all
> function/method definitions with the inline keyword. However that was
> a pretty small library so I'm not sure you'd have the same easy time
> of it with a larger library like clBLAS.
> 
> 
>> On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 2:37 PM, Charles Determan <cdetermanjr at gmail.com> wrote:
>> This is probably the best place I can think of to ask this question if
>> perhaps not completely on topic.  Some quick context:
>> 
>> I am exploring GPGPU computing and with my 'open-source' mindset I quickly
>> gravitated to using OpenCL.  Thankfully, many wonderful programmers have
>> already begun creating libraries to make this language better and faster.
>> One such library is the clBLAS library which essentially implements BLAS
>> routines for OpenCL enabled devices. Naturally, I would like to use this
>> library but I don't like the idea of telling users to install a dependency
>> outside of R and would rather have them install another package.  Therefore,
>> I have it in my head to create a header package for the clBLAS library to be
>> used by anyone exploring OpenCL programming within R.
>> 
>> This leads me to my two general questions that I hope others can comment.
>> 
>> 1.  What are developers thoughts regarding the 'packaging' of various C++
>> header libraries?  I know this has be very successfully done with the 'BH'
>> package but is this considered an exception or an example?
>> 
>> 2. If it is encouraged to create such header packages are there any
>> guidelines or standards that should be followed?  Is there an expected
>> structure?  I can look at the 'BH' package and go from there but it would be
>> nice if the R(cpp) community had some collective opinion about this.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Charles
>> 
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