[Rcpp-devel] RFC: Rcpp modules vs. RefClass

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 29 November 2016 at 11:12, Hao Ye wrote:
|     (I guess one downside of Rcpp modules is the use of external pointers,
|     which implies they do not serialize / deserialize well?)
| 
| 
| I think not at all, unless you can force the same memory location for a new R
| session and everything it loads. This is documented in the Rcpp-modules
| vignette -- I tried it anyway, and it crashed my R session. :)

Right.

And as I recall it is not so much the use of XPtr but rather that it points
to some content in memory for which we don't have a serialization mechanism.

Now, if memory serves, the good folks of the Stan project did in fact build
something related in order to preserve compilation via inline (or a variant)
across sessions so it is not impossible.  But it hasn't been done here.

And the bigger point, as Kevin noted, is that Modules is not exactly under
active development.

Dirk

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