Arrow Development Environment Part 3: R

This is part of a series on setting up an Arrow development environment. If you haven’t gone through part 1 on setting up C++, start there.

Installation

First, install R. There is a file you can add to the Conda environment to use R within the environment, but it will not work for now on ARM Macs because pandoc is not yet available through Conda for that platform.

Then, install R dependencies with:

pushd r
R -e "install.packages('remotes'); remotes::install_deps(dependencies = TRUE)"
popd

Configuring VS Code

To configure VS Code you’ll need to update .vscode/tasks.json and .vscode/launch.json.

Add the following tasks to .vscode/tasks.json:

    {
            "type": "process",
            "label": "Build R package",
            "command": "R",
            "args": [
                "CMD",
                "INSTALL",
                ".",
                "--preclean",
            ],
            "options": {
                "cwd": "${workspaceFolder}/r",
                "env": {
                    "MAKEFLAGS": "-j8"
                }
            },
            "group": "build",
        },
        {
            "type": "process",
            "label": "Test R",
            "command": "R",
            "args": [
                "-e",
                "devtools::test()"
            ],
            "options": {"cwd": "${workspaceFolder}/r/"},
            "group": "test",
        },
        {
            "type": "process",
            "label": "Lint R",
            "command": "R",
            "args": [
                "-e",
                "lintr::lint_package()"
            ],
            "options": {"cwd": "${workspaceFolder}/r/"},
            "group": "test",
        }

Next, add the following launch configuration to .vscode/launch.json:

    {
        "name": "LLDB Attach to R",
        "type": "lldb",
        "request": "attach",
        // You may need to adjust this path to your R
        "program": "/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/bin/exec/R",
        // Use `Sys.getpid()`
        "pid": "${command:pickProcess}",
        "args": [],
        "stopAtEntry": false,
        "cwd": "${workspaceFolder}",
        "environment": [],
        "externalConsole": true,
        "MIMode": "lldb",
        "setupCommands": [
          {
            "description": "Enable pretty-printing for gdb",
            "text": "-enable-pretty-printing",
            "ignoreFailures": true
          }
        ]
      },

How to Use the Environment

Within VS Code

You can build the R package with:

   CMD + SHIFT + B > Build R

Run all tests:

   CMD + P, type “task”, then select Test R

Format and lint:

   CMD + P, type “task”, then select Lint R

For using the debugger, see part 4.

From CLI

Build the R package:

pushd r
MAKEFLAGS=-j8 R CMD INSTALL . --preclean

Run tests in R console

devtools::test()

Lint (in R):

lintr::lint_package()

Format code (bash):

make style