[R-sig-dyn-mod] Using dynamically compiled code for use with deSolve in a new package

[Thomas Petzoldt]

Hi,

including Fortran and/or C sources in /src is exactly what we (and the 
other CRAN authors) do. It is self-evident, that binary code (like dlls) 
cannot be included in portable packages, that are expected to run on 
different operating systems. Details are found in "Writing R Extensions".

I don't see a problem with roxygen2, this is exactly how it was 
implemented in package "growthrates", mentioned earlier. Let's assume we 
have a package called "foo", add the following roxygen-directives to a 
file "R/foo-package.R":

#' @useDynLib foo
#'
#' @importFrom deSolve ode

Hope it helps,

Thomas


On 29.11.2017 14:44, Rampal S. Etienne wrote:
> Dear Thomas,
> 
> Thanks again for this reply. While this may work locally and for some
> users, it does not work in my case where my namespace file is generated
> by roxygen2. Also, CRAN does not like dll-file to be in the package
> (inst folder), so it needs to be built at installation. How do I do
> this? Simply including the Fortran code in the src directory does not
> work (gives error 127, whatever that is). Any suggestions?
> 
> Cheers, Rampal
> 
> 
> On 11-6-2017 21:15, Thomas Petzoldt wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> that's straightforward.
>>
>> 1) Put deSolve in Depends of your package DESCRIPTION:
>>
>> Depends: deSolve
>>
>>
>> 2) Import the solver function (e.g. ode or lsoda) in the NAMESPACE of
>> your package and declare your dynamic library (.dll or .so)
>>
>> importFrom(deSolve,ode)
>>
>> useDynLib(mypackage)
>>
>>
>> 3) and then use this .dll/.so in the call to ode():
>>
>> ode(...., dllname = "mypackage", .....)
>>
>>
>> An example can be found in package growthrates:
>>
>> https://github.com/tpetzoldt/growthrates/blob/master/pkg/R/grow_twostep.R
>>
>> Hope it helps,
>>
>> Thomas
>>
>>
>>
>> On 11.06.2017 13:20, Rampal Etienne wrote:
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> I have written C and FORTRAN functions to use with deSolve and found
>>> that it works significantly faster than the analogous R functions. So
>>> far so good! However, now I want to build a package that uses this code.
>>> How do I do this? I can include the DLL in the package (so no more
>>> compilation by the user of the package, just loading it), but then the
>>> user needs to be able to find it. Where will this be installed? That may
>>> be different on different systems. Any suggestions?
>>>
>>> Cheers, Rampal