[Rd] R on Google Android

[Mikkel Meyer Andersen]

Simon,

Thanks for your answer.

Do you have a link describing the procedure on compiling for iPhone or
is it really just ready out of the box? A description would help me
trying to do it with Android. I've done some searching, but the only
relevant hit I've found is
http://ephphatharesearch.com/Eph_Blog_Post.aspx/Show/41.

Cheers, Mikkel.

2009/10/12 Simon Urbanek <simon.urbanek at r-project.org>:
> Mikkel,
>
> On Oct 11, 2009, at 6:38 AM, Mikkel Meyer Andersen wrote:
>
>> As a follow-up on [1], I'd like to raise the question of whether it's
>> practically possible to compile R to the Google Android mobile
>> platform?
>>
>> The best way would probably be to use the Native Developer Kit [2],
>> NDK, and in that way get a library. This could then be interfaced to
>> by a Java-program.
>>
>> I know that several questions have been raised against the idea, e.g.
>> with the input methods and all that, but I wouldn't be that hard to
>> make an alternative input method or even a new language that could be
>> compiled to R.
>>
>> The reason I'm raising this question again, is that I would really
>> want a (basic) statistical package on my mobile phone, and I think it
>> would be kind of stupid to start writing one from scratch when R is
>> already out there.
>>
>
> Get an iPhone ;), you can compile R for iPhone OS almost out of the box.
>
> But seriously, the NDK seems to be ARM as well (like the iPhone) so chances
> are that is may work in a similar fashion. According to the NDK docs it
> includes JNI so you should be able to use rJava/JRI to embed R (see the JGR
> project for an example of a GUI using the "normal" Java). [I didn't actually
> try it so your mileage may vary].
>
>
>> Unfortunately I don't know that much about build systems and are not
>> capable of assesing whether it indeed would be possible to port R to
>> Android through NDK. I know a bit of both R, Java, and C and would be
>> able to help trying some different approaches, if anybody wants to
>> help me.
>>
>> The alternative is to start writing a new mobile statistical package
>> from the beginning. And although it should only maybe support 5% of
>> the functionality of R, it would take a lot of time to do that. And
>> I'd love to avoid that when good people has already done an amazing
>> job :-).
>>
>
> People have proposed that and tried that long time ago, but I don't think
> anyone succeeded.
>
> Cheers,
> Simon
>
>
>> Cheers, Mikkel Meyer Andersen.
>>
>> [1]: http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/Rhelp08/2009-February/187425.html
>> [2]: http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/1.5_r1/index.html
>>
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>
>