EVOLUTION-MANAGER

Edit File: ANNOUNCE-0.11.0.txt

===== Summary ===== Version 0.11.0 of the Rcpp package is now on CRAN and its mirrors. This new release brings a number of new features, most noticably a simplified build system, as well as improvements to existing features and bugfixes. Complete details of the changes implemented between the last announcement for version 0.10.0 and this new can be found in the NEWS and ChangeLog files which are included in the package. ===== Overview ===== Rcpp is an R package and associated C++ library for seamless integration between C++ and R. It has been described in a Journal of Statistical Software (2011, Vol 40, Issue 08) paper (also included in the package as the "Rcpp-introduction" pdf vignette) and a book "Seamless R and C++ Integration with Rcpp" (2013, Springer, useR! Series). As of early 2014, Rcpp is used by over 160 other CRAN packages. Several key features of the new 0.11.0 release are described below. ===== One-time rebuild required ===== Because of the simplified linking scheme detailed in the next section, and the corresponding removal of the libRcpp.* library, all packages currently using Rcpp need to be reinstalled. We provide a simple helper script at https://github.com/RcppCore/rcpp-logs/blob/master/scripts/showReverseRcppDepends.r to identidy which of your currently-installed packages use Rcpp, and need to be rebuilt / reinstalled. ===== Simpler Building with Rcpp ===== Thanks to the 'LinkingTo:' directive, R already instructed the compiler where to fine header files when writing code with Rcpp. The package now uses the registration facilities in R (see Section 5.4 in Writing R Extensions). With just an 'Imports: Rcpp' in DESCRIPTION along with an explicit import statement in the NAMESPACE file such 'importFrom(Rcpp, evalCpp)' all required Rcpp code will be properly instantiated without any explicit linking. [ Note that just using 'import(Rcpp)' is not sufficient, but any exported C++ identifier should do -- evalCpp is nice and short. ] This means that the package no longer provides a user-facing library libRcpp.so (or libRcpp.dylib or libRcpp.dll). This also implies that a one-time rebuild is needed as alluded to in the previous section. The key benefit is that many package should no longer require the files src/Makevars and src/Makevars.win in order to link with Rcpp. Mny packages will be able to retire these files. The exception, of course, is the case where a package links against an external library as eg the RcppArmadillo package> Here, the LAPACK / BLAS / Fortran libraries still need to be linked. However, the corresponding values are also provided by R and the expression becomes a simple 'PKG_LIBS=$(LAPACK_LIBS) $(BLAS_LIBS) $(FLIBS)'. ===== Rcpp attributes ===== Rcpp attributes were a key innovation in the 0.10.0; they have matured further and have now become the standard way to build code with Rcpp. See the dedicated vignette for details. ==== C++11 Support ===== R 3.1.0, to be released in a few month, will permit compilation using C++11, the newest C++ standard -- including for packages going to CRAN. Rcpp had already supported 'local' builds using C++11 since version 0.10.3, simply add [[Rcpp::plugins(cpp11)]] and Rcpp attributes takes care of the rest. ===== Memory management ===== A number of internal data structures have been rewritten. ===== Links ===== Rcpp site: http://www.rcpp.org Rcpp Gallery: http://gallery.rcpp.org Dirk's Rcpp page: http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/code/rcpp.html GitHub page: https://github.com/RcppCore/Rcpp R-forge project page: http://r-forge.r-project.org/projects/rcpp/ Google+: https://plus.google.com/b/107029540907667241299/107029540907667241299/posts ===== Support ===== Questions about Rcpp should be directed to the Rcpp-devel mailing list https://lists.r-forge.r-project.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rcpp-devel While we prefer the mailing list, StackOverflow has also become a frequently used resource under the [rcpp] tag: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/rcpp On behalf of the Rcpp Core team, Dirk Eddelbuettel February 2014