R devel - Mar 2019 - Should CRAN accept packages with non-R code that transcompiles into R code?

It may be possible to create an R-like programming language that
transcompiles into R code (or otherwise constructs R objects and calls
R functions).

I'm not sure whether it would pass R check or not, I will probably try...

But the bigger question is:
Should CRAN accept packages written in such a way?

I could email Kurt Hornik or Uwe Ligges, and ask them.
However, I thought that I would ask here first.

Everything is possible. One can compile C++ into JavaScript.

But why?
> On Mar 4, 2019, at 6:28 PM, Abs Spurdle <spurdle.a at gmail.com>
wrote:
> 
> It may be possible to create an R-like programming language that
> transcompiles into R code (or otherwise constructs R objects and calls
> R functions).
> 
> I'm not sure whether it would pass R check or not, I will probably
try...
> 
> But the bigger question is:
> Should CRAN accept packages written in such a way?
> 
> I could email Kurt Hornik or Uwe Ligges, and ask them.
> However, I thought that I would ask here first.
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>
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Abs (?),

I have thought about and have (somewhere "up near the top" of my todo
list)
prototyping a preprocessor for R, and I have relevant code that emits
(transpiles, in a way) structured comments into S4 code in
https://github.com/gmbecker/S4Coffee.

All that said, until/unless the preprocessor is officially part of the R
CMD build step, what putting code like that on CRAN would look like is you
keep the raw code in /inst somewhere, and you do the emitting of R code
into R/ before building the tarball for submitting. And if you do that CRAN
will hav eno problem accepting such a package provided it isn't disallowed
in some other way.

Best,
~G

On Mon, Mar 4, 2019 at 3:28 PM Abs Spurdle <spurdle.a at gmail.com> wrote:
> It may be possible to create an R-like programming language that
> transcompiles into R code (or otherwise constructs R objects and calls
> R functions).
>
> I'm not sure whether it would pass R check or not, I will probably
try...
>
> But the bigger question is:
> Should CRAN accept packages written in such a way?
>
> I could email Kurt Hornik or Uwe Ligges, and ask them.
> However, I thought that I would ask here first.
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>
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On Tue, Mar 5, 2019 at 12:49 PM jan Vitek <vitekj at icloud.com> wrote:
> Everything is possible. One can compile C++ into JavaScript.
>
> But why?
>
>
I would like to support Java style syntax for class definitions.
(Then it could transcompile into either S3 or S4).

And possibly change some other things while I'm at it.
Maybe, integers (rather than numerics) as defaults, and * for standard
matrix multiplication (and ** for R style vectorized multiplication).

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On Tue, Mar 5, 2019 at 12:52 PM Gabriel Becker <gabembecker at gmail.com>
wrote:
> I have thought about and have (somewhere "up near the top" of my
todo
> list) prototyping a preprocessor for R, and I have relevant code that emits
> (transpiles, in a way) structured comments into S4 code in
> https://github.com/gmbecker/S4Coffee.
>
> All that said, until/unless the preprocessor is officially part of the R
> CMD build step, what putting code like that on CRAN would look like is you
> keep the raw code in /inst somewhere, and you do the emitting of R code
> into R/ before building the tarball for submitting. And if you do that CRAN
> will hav eno problem accepting such a package provided it isn't
disallowed
> in some other way.
>
I think that I would prefer to generate (and run) the R code during
.onLoad(), rather than pre-generate it and put it in the R subdirectory.
If it's in the R subdirectory, then we have two copies of the same thing,
plus it would need to be documented using the rd format, which I would like
to minimize, in favor other documentation formats.
Which is where CRAN may not like it...

In regards to S4Coffee, it sounds promising.
I hope you get in finished in the near future.
And I will take a closer look at it.

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