[Rd] Minimal build of R ...

[R. Michael Weylandt]

On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 5:12 PM, Jony Hudson <jony.hudson at imperial.ac.uk> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>  I'm trying to cross-compile R to javascript so that it can run in a web-browser. Take as long as you need to stop laughing. So, as I was saying - I want to try and get a build of R running in the browser. [If you're not familiar with it already, you might enjoy looking at emscripten.org. It's a remarkably capable tool for translating LLVM bitcode to javascript. Check out some of the demos!]
>
> I'm trying to start out with the most minimal build of R possible. I can turn off various options in the configure script, but I'm wondering about the bundled R packages (base, stats etc). I'm guessing that the native code portions of these packages are dynamically loaded at runtime, which will probably need patching. To start off, I'd like to not build these packages if possible.
>
> So, is there a way to configure which packages in the library get built or is it just a case of editing the makefile? And is there a minimal set of them that would still allow R to run (not be useful - that can come later - just run)?

You can run just "base:"

for(i in 1:(length(search()) - 2)){detach(2)}

search()

Not sure if you need "compiler" around for the build process, but we
survived without it once, so I'd assume you can get by without it if
you're willing to tweak.

Godspeed,

MW