[Rcpp-devel] R/C++ post on R Devel Blog

[Simon Urbanek]

Fernando,

there was a pretty big follow-up discussion on R-devel that's worth reading:
https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2019-March/077560.html

but I want to point out that people may have misunderstood the recommendation - if you just use Rcpp (or other means) to get data from R, run some C++ code and then return results back, it's completely fine and not what the scope of his post was. It was about mixing R API calls and C++ in ways where you intersperse C++ allocations with R API calls and/or where you create classes with R API which is requires a lot more knowledge than people realize.

That said, I think the Rcpp community is the best line forward here, since Rcpp is in a position to clarify the technical issues and provide tools if need be. For example, just flagging Rcpp calls that don't call (non-macro) R API and thus are "safe" could be useful. I think we could use more supportive comments from Rcpp users/developers on that thread ;) - just my $.02.

Cheers,
Simon


> On Apr 4, 2019, at 1:32 PM, Fernando H Toledo <fernandohtoledo at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear All,
> 
> Recently Tomas Kalibera has post on the blog of R developers about the use o C++ in R packages.
> 
> The post can be seem at the following link: https://developer.r-project.org/Blog/public/2019/03/28/use-of-c---in-packages/
> 
> I would like to know your thoughts over that. In summary, he recommend to avoid C++ in R packages but for me his points are not too clear. Maybe you can help me to clarify them.
> 
> Cheers,
> FH
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