Including a binary Python Interpreter into a binary R-package for MS Windows

From: Gabor Grothendieck <ggrothendieck at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Rd] Including a binary Python Interpreter into a binary  R-package for MS Windows
To: gvsteen at yahoo.com
Cc: Uwe.Ligges at r-project.org, r-devel at r-project.org
Date: Wednesday, September 2, 2009, 12:06 AM
On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 5:41 PM,
<gvsteen at yahoo.com>
wrote:

2009/8/30 Uwe Ligges <ligges at statistik.tu-dortmund.de>:
[snip]

Guido van Steen wrote:

[snip]

Something that interests me too: What about

R's policy with respect to

including binary files? I saw that developers

should include a file

[snip]

Please do not include binary files and carefully

watch for licenses of those

files (e.g. if GPL'ed, you need to ship sources!).

If pyhthon is required, I

highly suggest to state it in the

SystemDependencies and be fine with it -

users can learn to install phython themselves, I'm

pretty sure.

Hi Uwe,

Note: I will send this email cc. to the R-devel list,

which I joined today. I think it may be of interest to other
people as well.

Thank you for your answer, although it disappointed me

a bit. I had already spent quite some time building a
stand-alone windows binary of a new package "write2xls".
This package provides the same R interface to Python as the
other package "dataframes2xls". As you know it enable users
to create xls files. The special thing about "write2xls" is
that it does not have any dependencies at all. It is
so-to-speak a turn-key solution.

Of course I should have read a bit more before I

started. Only after your mail I read the pdf-file "Writing R
Extensions". It says "A source package if possible should
not contain binary executable files: they are not portable,
and a security risk if they are of the appropriate
architecture. R CMD check will warn about them unless they
are listed (one filepath per line) in a file 'BinaryFiles'
at the top level of the package or bundle. Note that CRAN
will no longer accept submissions containing binary files
even if they are listed."

So, yes, you are right. I was actually hoping that

CRAN could make some exceptions, but after some thinking I
fully understand that many people would object to this for
good reasons: R code depending on a C compiler will not work
without a C Compiler either. For security reasons we cannot
allow packages to install a binary C compiler. So, yes, I
understand the reasons but still it is a pity.

The current situation is that many MS Windows users

can not easily use "dataframes2xls". There are a few
reasons:

* Most users of MS Windows will be unfamiliar with

Python, which will make them reluctant to install Python.

* Installing Python will be impossible on many MS

Windows platforms due to limited user rights.

* Downloading a standard Python installer takes about

15 Megabytes. My newly created "write2xls" package just
contains 1.3 MB.

Note that the rSymPy package has an entire Jython
interpreter
in it and provided your software is only R and pure python
you
should be able to run it off that.

Of course this just trades one dependency for another, i.e.
it
does not require python since that's included but it does
require
java; however, most people have java installed already
since a lot
of the free software out there requires java.? See:
http://rsympy.googlecode.com

Note that since java jar files are source files and since
java itself
is not included it was possible to do that without any
binaries.