Mon, 06 Mar 2017

RProtoBuf 0.4.9

RProtoBuf provides R bindings for the Google Protocol Buffers ("Protobuf") data encoding and serialization library used and released by Google, and deployed as a language and operating-system agnostic protocol by numerous projects.

The RProtoBuf 0.4.9 release is the fourth and final update this weekend following the request by CRAN to not use package= in .Call() when PACKAGE= is really called for.

Some of the code in RProtoBuf 0.4.9 had this bug; some other entry points had neither (!!). With the ongoing drive to establish proper registration of entry points, a few more issues were coming up, all of which are now addressed. And we had some other unreleased minor cleanup, so this made for a somewhat longer (compared to the other updates this weekend) NEWS list:

Changes in RProtoBuf version 0.4.9 (2017-03-06)

  • A new file init.c was added with calls to R_registerRoutines() and R_useDynamicSymbols()

  • Symbol registration is enabled in useDynLib

  • Several missing PACKAGE= arguments were added to the corresponding .Call invocations

  • Two (internal) C++ functions were renamed with suffix _cpp to disambiguate them from R functions with the same name

  • All of above were part of #26

  • Some editing corrections were made to the introductory vignette (David Kretch in #25)

  • The 'configure.ac' file was updated, and renamed from the older converntion 'configure.in', along with 'src/Makevars'. (PR #24 fixing #23)

CRANberries also provides a diff to the previous release. The RProtoBuf page has an older package vignette, a 'quick' overview vignette, a unit test summary vignette, and the pre-print for the JSS paper. Questions, comments etc should go to the GitHub issue tracker off the GitHub repo.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

/code/rprotobuf | permanent link

RVowpalWabbit 0.0.9

The RVowpalWabbit package update is the third of four upgrades requested by CRAN, following RcppSMC 0.1.5 and RcppGSL 0.3.2.

This package being somewhat raw, the change was simple and just meant converting the single entry point to using Rcpp Attributes -- which addressed the original issue in passing.

No new code or features were added.

We should mention that is parallel work ongoing in a higher-level package interfacing the vw binary -- rvw -- as well as plan to redo this package via the external libraries. In that sounds interesting to you, please get in touch.

More information is on the RVowpalWabbit page. Issues and bugreports should go to the GitHub issue tracker.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

/code/rvowpalwabbit | permanent link