RProtoBuf 0.2.6
Release 0.2.6 of RProtoBuf arrived on CRAN earlier this morning. RProtoBuf provides GNU R bindings for the Google Protobuf data encoding library used and released by Google.

This release was once more driven largely by Murray whom we have now added among the list of authors of the package too. The NEWS file entry follows below:

Changes in version 0.2.6 (2012-10-04)

• Applied several more patches by Murray to

  • correct '_' and '__' mismatches in wrapper calls

  • update a few manual pages for style, and add examples

  • fix a bug where NAs were silently treated as TRUE for logical/bool types

  • fix a bug that caused crashes when adding vectors to optional fields

  • fix bugs in readASCII that returned empty protocol buffers when the file or connection could not be opened

  • distinguish between non-existant and not-set fieldswith has() by returning NULL in the former case.

  • fix a bug that caused non-deterministic behavior when setting a repeated message field in a protobuf to a single Message.

  • add unit tests for all of the above.

• Added Murray to Authors: field in DESCRIPTION

• Removed old and unconvincing example on RProtoBuf for storage and serialization in an imagined HighFrequencyFinance context

/code/rprotobuf | permanent link

RProtoBuf 0.2.5
A new release 0.2.5 of RProtoBuf is now on CRAN. RProtoBuf provides GNU R bindings for the Google Protobuf data encoding library used and released by Google.

This release once again contains a number of patches kindly contributed by Murray Stokely, as well as some updates to conform to CRAN Policy changes.

The NEWS file entry follows below:

Changes in version 0.2.5 (2012-08-08)

• Applied patches by Murray to

  • correctly deal with nested Protocol Buffer definitions, and also add new unit test for this

  • test a a protocol buffer for missing required fields before serializing it, also add a unit test

  • add a small stylistic fix and examples to the 'add.Rd' manual page

• Moved inst/doc/ to vignettes/ per newer CRAN Policy

/code/rprotobuf | permanent link

RProtoBuf 0.2.4
A new release 0.2.4 of RProtoBuf is now on CRAN. RProtoBuf provides GNU R bindings for the Google Protobuf data encoding library used and released by Google.

This release once again contains a number of patches kindly contributed by Murray Stokely, as well as an added header file needed to build with the g++ 4.7 version which has become the build standard on CRAN.

The NEWS file entry follows below:

0.2.4   2012-05-15

    o   Applied several patches kindly supplied by Murray Stokely to
         - properly work with repeated strings 
         - correct C++ function naming in a few instances
         - add an example of ascii export/import of messages

    o   Suppport g++-4.7 and stricter #include file checking by adding unistd

    o   Made small improvements to the startup code

/code/rprotobuf | permanent link

RProtoBuf 0.2.3
A maintenance release 0.2.3 of RProtoBuf is now on CRAN. RProtoBuf provides GNU R bindings for the Google Protobuf data encoding library used and released by Google.

The NEWS file entry follows below:

0.2.3   2011-04-12

   o    Protect UINT64 and INT64 with '#ifdef RCPP_HAS_LONG_LONG' which
        itself is valid with either g++ <= 4.4, or newer versions if the 
        -std=c++0x is used

    o   The documentation Makefile now uses the $R_HOME environment variable

    o   The documentation Makefile no longer calls clean in the all target

Diff between RProtoBuf versions 0.2.2 dated 2011-01-12 and 0.2.3 dated 2011-04-13

 RProtoBuf-0.2.2/RProtoBuf/inst/doc/RProtoBuf-quickref.Rnw                     |only
 RProtoBuf-0.2.3/RProtoBuf/ChangeLog                                           |   23 
 RProtoBuf-0.2.3/RProtoBuf/DESCRIPTION                                         |    8 
 RProtoBuf-0.2.3/RProtoBuf/R/with.R                                            |   12 
 RProtoBuf-0.2.3/RProtoBuf/cleanup                                             |    3 
 RProtoBuf-0.2.3/RProtoBuf/inst/NEWS                                           |   10 
 RProtoBuf-0.2.3/RProtoBuf/inst/doc/Makefile                                   |   42 
 RProtoBuf-0.2.3/RProtoBuf/inst/doc/RProtoBuf-quickref.pdf                     |binary
 RProtoBuf-0.2.3/RProtoBuf/inst/doc/RProtoBuf-unitTests.pdf                    |binary
 RProtoBuf-0.2.3/RProtoBuf/inst/doc/RProtoBuf.pdf                              | 1267 +++++-----
 RProtoBuf-0.2.3/RProtoBuf/inst/doc/unitTests-results/RProtoBuf-unitTests.html |   20 
 RProtoBuf-0.2.3/RProtoBuf/inst/doc/unitTests-results/RProtoBuf-unitTests.txt  |   14 
 RProtoBuf-0.2.3/RProtoBuf/src/extractors.cpp                                  |   44 
 RProtoBuf-0.2.3/RProtoBuf/src/mutators.cpp                                    |   55 
 RProtoBuf-0.2.3/RProtoBuf/src/wrapper_FieldDescriptor.cpp                     |   24 
 15 files changed, 819 insertions(+), 703 deletions(-)

As always, there is more information at the RProtoBuf page which has a draft package vignette, a 'quick' overview vignette and a unit test summary vignette. Questions, comments etc should go to the rprotobuf mailing list off the RProtoBuf page at R-Forge.

/code/rprotobuf | permanent link

RProtoBuf 0.2.2
Thanks to two patches by Murray Stokely, we have a nice new minor release 0.2.2 of RProtoBuf out on CRAN. RProtoBuf provides GNU R bindings for the Google Protobuf data encoding library used and released by Google.

The NEWS file entry follows below:

0.2.2   2011-01-11

   o    Applied two patches by Murray Stokely which 
         - correct a typo preventing some functions from being called, 
         - add bounds checking in call to google protobuf library, 
         - add a new name method 
         - add a tiny unit test for the above
         - add more graceful error handling
         - add support for import patterns other than .proto$, 
         - add simple reading file that does not exist (exception) test
         - add simple repeated field unit test

 ChangeLog                                           |   35 
 DESCRIPTION                                         |    8 
 R/00classes.R                                       |   11 
 R/internals.R                                       |    7 
 R/wrapper_EnumDescriptor.R                          |    6 
 inst/NEWS                                           |   12 
 inst/THANKS                                         |only
 inst/doc/Makefile                                   |    4 
 inst/doc/RProtoBuf-quickref.pdf                     |binary
 inst/doc/RProtoBuf-unitTests.pdf                    |binary
 inst/doc/RProtoBuf.pdf                              | 2362 +++++++++-----------
 inst/doc/unitTests-results/RProtoBuf-unitTests.html |   20 
 inst/doc/unitTests-results/RProtoBuf-unitTests.txt  |   23 
 inst/unitTests/runit.addressbook.R                  |   11 
 inst/unitTests/runit.enums.R                        |only
 inst/unitTests/runit.golden.message.R               |    7 
 inst/unitTests/runit.import.R                       |only
 man/EnumDescriptor-class.Rd                         |   42 
 man/EnumValueDescriptor-class.Rd                    |   23 
 man/readProtoFiles.Rd                               |    3 
 src/DescriptorPoolLookup.cpp                        |   26 
 src/S4_classes.h                                    |    6 
 src/wrapper_EnumDescriptor.cpp                      |   25 
 src/wrapper_EnumValueDescriptor.cpp                 |   25 
 24 files changed, 1357 insertions(+), 1299 deletions(-)

As always, there is more information at the RProtoBuf page which has a draft package vignette, a 'quick' overview vignette and a unit test summary vignette. Questions, comments etc should go to the rprotobuf mailing list off the RProtoBuf page at R-Forge.

/code/rprotobuf | permanent link

RProtoBuf 0.2.1
A fresh minor release of RProtoBuf, now at version 0.2.1, has appeared earlier today on CRAN. RProtoBuf provides GNU R bindings for the Google Protobuf data encoding library used and released by Google.

This releases extends the recent 0.2.0 release of RProtoBuf with a patch for raw bytes serialization which Koert Kuipers kindly contributed. This helps RProtoBuf for RPC communication where raw bytes are often a preferred form.

As always, there is more information at the RProtoBuf page which has a draft package vignette, a 'quick' overview vignette and a unit test summary vignette. Questions, comments etc should go to the rprotobuf mailing list off the RProtoBuf page at R-Forge.

/code/rprotobuf | permanent link

RProtoBuf 0.2,0
A brand new and shiny release of RProtoBuf, now at version 0.2.0, arrived on CRAN earlier today. RProtoBuf provides GNU R bindings for the Google Protobuf data encoding library used and release by Google and others.

This is only the second release after 0.1-0 more than six months ago. Given that Rcpp is such a key ingedrient for RProtoBuf, and that Rcpp underwent so many exciting changes itself, Romain and I never got around to releasing new versions of RProtoBuf. This version is now much closer to the actual C++ API and fairly feature rich. We summarised a few of these new things in the presentation at useR! 2010.

There is more information at the RProtoBuf page; there is a draft package vignette, a 'quick' overview vignette and a unit test summary vignette. Questions, comments etc should go to the rprotobuf mailing list off the RProtoBuf page at R-Forge.

/code/rprotobuf | permanent link

RProtoBuf 0.1-0
Romain uploaded our first release of RProtoBuf to CRAN yesterday. RProtoBuf provides bindings for GNU R to the Google Protobuf implementation. Google Protobuf is (and I quote) a way of encoding structured data in an efficient yet extensible format that is used for almost all internal RPC protocols and file formats at Google.

RProtoBuf had a funny start. I had blogged about the 12 hour passage from proof of concept to R-Forge project following the ORD session hackfest in October. What happened next was as good. Romain emailed within hours of the blog post and reminded me of a similar project that is part of Saptarshi Guha's RHIPE R/Hadoop implementation. So the three of us--Romain, Saptarshi and I---started emailing and before long it becomes clear that Romain is both rather intrigued by this (whereas Saptarshi has slightly different needs for the inner workings of his Hadoop bindings) and was able to devote some time to it. So the code kept growing and growing at a fairly rapid clip. Til that stopped as we switched to working feverishly on Rcpp to both support the needs of this project, and to implement ideas we had while working on this. That now lead to the point where Rcpp is maturing in terms of features, so we will probably have time come back to more work on RProtoBuf to take advantage of the nice templated autoconversions we now have in Rcpp. Oddly enough, the initial blog post seemed to anticipate changes in Rcpp.

Anyway -- RProtoBuf is finally here and it already does a fair amount of magic based of code reflection using the proto files. The Google documentation has a simple example of a 'person' entry in an 'addressbook' which, when translated to R, goes like this:

R> library( RProtoBuf )                      ## load the package
R> readProtoFiles( "addressbook.proto" )     ## acquire protobuf information
R> bob <- new( tutorial.Person,              ## create new object
+   email = "bob@example.com",
+   name = "Bob",
+   id = 123 )
R> writeLines( bob$toString() )              ## serialize to stdout
name: "Bob"
id: 123
email: "bob@example.com"

R> bob$email                                 ## access and/or override
[1] "bob@example.com"
R> bob$id <- 5
R> bob$id
[1] 5

R> serialize( bob, "person.pb" )             ## serialize to compact binary format

There is more information at the RProtoBuf page, and we already have a draft package vignette, a 'quick' overview vignette and a unit test summary vignette.

More changes should be forthcoming as Romain and I find time to code them up. Feedback is as always welcome.

/code/rprotobuf | permanent link