porter

The goal of {porter} is to generate port files for rdyncall to support Foreign Function Interface (FFI) for C Libraries in R. It uses CastXML, a C-family abstract syntax tree XML output tool to parse C header files.

Installation

You can install porter from CRAN with:

install.packages("porter")

You can install the development version of porter from GitHub with:

remotes::install_github("hongyuanjia/porter")

Example

Locate CastXML

porter uses CastXML but does not download or install it. Install CastXML with your system package manager before calling port().

On Windows, Scoop can install CastXML via scoop install main/castxml.
On macOS, Homebrew can install CastXML via brew install castxml.
On Linux, use your distribution package manager when it provides CastXML, or use Linuxbrew via brew install castxml.

locate_castxml() returns the CastXML executable porter will use. By default it checks Sys.which("castxml"), then common package-manager paths for Homebrew, Linuxbrew, Scoop, Chocolatey, and conda. Set options(porter.castxml = ...) to force a specific executable or installation directory.

library(porter)

locate_castxml()
#>                         0.7.0
#> "/opt/homebrew/bin/castxml"

Generate port files for C libraries

Run port() with the path of a C header file:

library(porter)

header <- tempfile(fileext = ".h")
writeLines(c(
  "typedef struct Point { int x; double y; } Point;",
  "int add(int a, int b);",
  "int message(const char *fmt, ...);"
), header)

p <- port(header)

p <- port_set(p,
  Package = "Example",
  Version = "1.0",
  Library = "example"
)

p
#> Package: Example
#> Version: 1.0
#> Library: example
#> Function: add(ii)i a b;
#> Variadic: message(Z)i fmt;
#> FuncPtr: <None>
#> Enum: <None>
#> Struct: Point{id}x y;
#> Union: <None>

Use port_write() to save the port file.

port_write(p, file.path(tempdir(), "Example.dynport"))

Author

Hongyuan Jia

License

The project is released under the terms of MIT License.