Yesterday afternoon, the nineth update in the 0.12.* series of Rcpp made it to the CRAN network for GNU R. Windows binaries have by now been generated; and the package was updated in Debian too. This 0.12.9 release follows the 0.12.0 release from late July, the 0.12.1 release in September, the 0.12.2 release in November, the 0.12.3 release in January, the 0.12.4 release in March, the 0.12.5 release in May, the 0.12.6 release in July, the 0.12.7 release in September, and the 0.12.8 release in November — making it the thirteenth release at the steady bi-montly release frequency.

Rcpp has become the most popular way of enhancing GNU R with C or C++ code. As of today, 906 packages on CRAN depend on Rcpp for making analytical code go faster and further. That is up by sixthythree packages over the two months since the last release — or about a package a day!

Some of the changes in this release are smaller and detail-oriented. We did squash one annoying bug (stemming from the improved exception handling) in Rcpp::stop() that hit a few people. Nathan Russell added a sample() function (similar to the optional one in RcppArmadillo; this required a minor cleanup by for small number of other packages which used both namespaces ‘opened’. Date and Datetime objects now have format() methods and << output support. We now have coverage reports via covr as well. Last but not least James "coatless" Balamuta was once more tireless on documentation and API consistency --- see below for more details.

Changes in Rcpp version 0.12.9 (2017-01-14)

• Changes in Rcpp API:

  • The exception stack message is now correctly demangled on all compiler versions (Jim Hester in #598)

  • Date and Datetime object and vector now have format methods and operator<< support (#599).

  • The size operator in Matrix is explicitly referenced avoiding a g++-6 issues (#607 fixing #605).

  • The underlying date calculation code was updated (#621, #623).

  • Addressed improper diagonal fill for non-symmetric matrices (James Balamuta in #622 addressing #619)

• Changes in Rcpp Sugar:

  • Added new Sugar function sample() (Nathan Russell in #610 and #616).

  • Added new Sugar function Arg() (James Balamuta in #626 addressing #625).

• Changes in Rcpp unit tests

  • Added Environment::find unit tests and an Environment::get(Symbol) test (James Balamuta in #595 addressing issue #594).

  • Added diagonal matrix fill tests (James Balamuta in #622 addressing #619)

• Changes in Rcpp Documentation:

  • Exposed pointers macros were included in the Rcpp Extending vignette (MathurinD; James Balamuta in #592 addressing #418).

  • The file Rcpp.bib move to directory bib which is guaranteed to be present (#631).

• Changes in Rcpp build system

  • Travis CI now also calls covr for coverage analysis (Jim Hester in PR #591)

Thanks to CRANberries, you can also look at a diff to the previous release. As always, even fuller details are on the Rcpp Changelog page and the Rcpp page which also leads to the downloads page, the browseable doxygen docs and zip files of doxygen output for the standard formats. A local directory has source and documentation too. Questions, comments etc should go to the rcpp-devel mailing list off the R-Forge page.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.