A new release of RProtoBuf — now at version 0.3.0 — arrived earlier on CRAN. RProtoBuf provides GNU R bindings for the Google Protobuf data encoding library used and released by Google.

Murray added a lot of new features which merited the increase in the minor number. The NEWS file entry follows below:

Changes in RProtoBuf version 0.3 (2013-07-13)

• Added support for Protocol Buffer extensions through the new getExtension and setExtension methods for Message objects, and added top-level extensions to the descriptor pool.

• Added more user-friendly show() methods for Messages, Descriptors, and other RProtoBuf objects. A common source of confusion on the mailing lists is to confuse Messages and Descriptors. The new show() methods succinctly display more information about e.g. the number of set fields in a message to make it a little clearer to users what type of object they are working with.

• Added has method for EnumDescriptor objects to test existance of a named constant in an enumeration, and fix a bug in the length method for these objects.

• Added a number method for EnumValueDescriptor objects to return the number of a named enumeration constant directly.

• Improved documentation and unit tests.

CRANberries also provides a diff to the previous release 0.2.6. More information is at the RProtoBuf page which has a draft package vignette, a ‘quick’ overview vignette and a unit test summary vignette. Questions, comments etc should go to the rprotobuf mailing list off the RProtoBuf page at R-Forge.