[Rd] Runnable R packages

[Barry Rowlingson]

On Thu, Jan 31, 2019 at 3:14 PM David Lindelof <lindelof using ieee.org> wrote:

>
> In summary, I'm convinced R would benefit from something similar to Java's
> `Main-Class` header or Python's `__main__()` function. A new R CMD command
> would take a package, install its dependencies, and run its "main"
> function.



I just created and built a very boilerplate R package called "runme". I can
install its dependencies and run its "main" function with:

 $ R CMD INSTALL runme_0.0.0.9000.tar.gz
 $ R -e 'runme::main()'

No new R CMDs needed. Now my choice of "main" is arbitrary, whereas with
python and java and C the entrypoint is more tightly specified (__name__ ==
"__main__" in python, int main(..) in C and so on). But I don't think
that's much of a problem.

Does that not satisfy your requirements close enough? If you want it in one
line then:

R CMD INSTALL runme_0.0.0.9000.tar.gz && R -e 'runme::main()'

will do the second if the first succeeds (Unix shells).

You could write a script for $RHOME/bin/RUN which would be a two-liner and
that could mandate the use of "main" as an entry point. But good luck
getting anything into base R.

Barry




> If we have this machinery available, we could even consider
> reaching out to Spark (and other tech stacks) developers and make it easier
> to develop R applications for those platforms.
>
>

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