R on Google Android
On Oct 11, 2009, at 9:17 PM, Mikkel Meyer Andersen wrote:
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?
You can compile R itself (libR) out of the box just using regular cross-compilation. The only issue are packages with native libraries - the easiest way is to create a multi-arch R so that the non-libs parts are actually built on the native architecture. For anything troublesome your can then also use R --arch=arm CMD SHLIB. This is really more a proof of concept since you're still missing a command line as there is no shell or ssh or normal iPhones but you could hook it into any GUI .. Of course as my old post on R-SIG-Mac on the topic says we don't have plans to use UIKit, but that's probably not that relevant for you anyway. Cheers, Simon
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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