[GRASS-dev] R and GRASS integration

[Steven Pawley]

Thank you Moritz,

Yes I have also had difficulties with Rpy2 apart from on Linux. Also, Rpy2 is quite onerous in terms of effort required to integrate R scripts into Python. Your solution certainly works,  but as you mentioned it makes the R script harder to maintain. PypeR is another alternative and is straightforward to install and is simpler from a user perspective. 

I would also be interested in hearing opinions from 'true' developers who have much greater expertise than myself in this area.

Kind regards,

Steve

> On Jan 4, 2016, at 2:31 AM, Moritz Lennert <mlennert at club.worldonline.be> wrote:
> 
>> On 04/01/16 10:28, Moritz Lennert wrote:
>>> On 03/01/16 23:54, Steven Pawley wrote:
>>> Like many R-GRASS users, I have a collection of R scripts that
>>> interact with GRASS to perform various workflows. I have debated
>>> about converting these to Python using Rpy2, although this package
>>> can be a difficult to install on all platforms and depends on
>>> specific versions of R and Python. I noticed that Moritz Lennert
>>> recently developed a GRASS add on which consists of simply writing
>>> out the R commands to a temporary script for R to run.
>> 
>> [...]
>>> 
>>> Does this represent a desirable or even acceptable approach for
>>> embedding R scripts into grass add ons, or is Rpy2 the 'official'
>>> approach.
>> 
>> I wouldn't consider my approach in any way official, but AFAIK, rpy2
>> does not have any "official" status in GRASS either. In my particular
>> case (v.class.mlR) this was a quick and dirty hack for a course I had to
>> teach. The difficulty of getting rpy2 installed on the lab machines on
>> short notice was one of the motivations not to use it. I also agree that
>> dependency on rpy2 can be a nuisance and has caused me some headaches
>> with other modules, before. However, the approach I used (and others
>> have used before) is a bit unwieldy and makes maintaining such modules a
>> bit of a pain.
>> 
>> So, I'm curious to hear the opinions of others...
> 
> See [1] for a related issue.
> 
> Moritz
> 
> [1] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/ticket/1290