Where to drop a python script?

The old convention was that it went in the exec/ directory, but as you 
can see at 
http://cran.at.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-devel/R-exts.html#Non_002dR-scripts-in-packages 
  it can be in inst/anyName/. A minor convenience of exec/ is that the 
directory has the same name in source and when installed, whereas 
inst/anyName gets moved to anyName/, so debugging can be a tiny bit 
easier with exec/.

Having just put a package (TSjson) on CRAN with a python script, here 
are a few other pointers for getting it on CRAN:

-SystemRequirements: should indicate if a particular version of python 
is needed, and any non-default modules that are needed. (My package does 
not work with Python 3 because some modules are not available.) Some of 
the libraries have changed, so it could be a bit tricky to make 
something work easily with both 2 and 3.

-You need a README to explain how to install Python. (If you look at or 
use mine, please let me know if you find problems.)

-The Linux and Sun CRAN test machines have Python 2 whereas winbuilder 
has Python 3. Be prepared to explain that the package will not work on 
one or the other.

Another option to system() is pipe()

Paul

On 30 October 2013 at 13:54, Jonathan Greenberg wrote:
| R-developers:
|
| I have a small python script that I'd like to include in an R package I'm
| developing, but I'm a bit unclear about which subfolder it should go in.  R
| will be calling the script via a system() call.  Thanks!

Up to you as you control the path. As "Writing R Extensions" explains,
everything below the (source) directory inst/ will get installed.  I like
inst/extScripts/ (or similar) as it denotes that it is an external script.

As an example, the gdata package has Perl code for xls reading/writing below a
directory inst/perl/ -- and I think there are more packages doing this.

Dirk