Another small update to RcppRedis arrived on CRAN this morning. The fix I made a few days ago addressing a unit test setup (for the rredis package loaded only for a comparison) didn't quite work out. Changes in version 0.1.5 (2015-07-17) Anothe... [Read more...]

We introduced RcppTOML in April with the initial CRAN release 0.0.3. It permits R to read the (absolutely awesome) TOML format which is simply fabulous for configuration files. A new version appeared on CRAN yesterday. We had observed a somewhat rare... [Read more...]

A new release of RcppEigen arrived on CRAN and in Debian yesterday. It synchronizes the Eigen code with the 3.2.5 upstream release. Once again, Yixuan Qiu did most of the heavy lifting in one very nice pull request, and I added some minor updates to ... [Read more...]

A new version of RcppGSL arrived on CRAN a couple of days ago. This package provides an interface from R to the GNU GSL using our Rcpp package. In the course of preparation for the higher-performance R via C++ course I gave in Zuerich last month, I o... [Read more...]

A small update to RcppRedis arrived on CRAN a few days ago. One of the unit tests failed as we (still) initialized the rredis package (loaded only for a comparison) in a form long-internalized by Bryan Lewis, its author. No actual changes to function... [Read more...]

A few days ago and while we were traveling, an updated release of our random package for truly (hardware-based) random numbers as provided by random.org arrived on CRAN. Brian Ripley had pointed out to us that some of the curl implementations (which ... [Read more...]

A new release, now at version 0.1.3, of pkgKitten arrived on CRAN this morning. The main change is (optional) support of the excellent whoami package by Gabor which allows us to fill in the Author: and Maintainer: fields of the DESCRIPTION file with ... [Read more...]

Conrad put out a new minor release 5.200.1 of Armadillo yesterday. Armadillo is a powerful and expressive C++ template library for linear algebra aiming towards a good balance between speed and ease of use with a syntax deliberately close to a Matlab. Our corresponding RcppArmadillo release 0.5.200.1.0 is now on CRAN and ... [Read more...]

After a few quiet months, a new version of rfoaas is now on CRAN. As before, it shadows upstream release of FOAAS from which carried over the version number 0.1.6. The rfoaas package provides an interface for R to the most excellent FOAAS service--which provides a modern, scalable and RESTful web ... [Read more...]

A new version, now at 0.0.4, of the drat package arrived on CRAN yesterday. Its name stands for drat R Archive Template, and it helps with easy-to-create and easy-to-use repositories for R packages, and is finding increasing by other projects. Versio... [Read more...]

A new released of BH is now on CRAN. BH provides a large part of the Boost C++ libraries as a set of template headers for use by R and Rcpp. This release both upgrades the version of Boost to the current release, and adds a new library: Boost MultiPr... [Read more...]

A new release 0.2.13 of RInside is now on CRAN. RInside provides a set of convenience classes which facilitate embedding of R inside of C++ applications and programs, using the classes and functions provided by Rcpp. This release works around a bug i... [Read more...]

A new release of our random package for truly (hardware-based) random numbers as provided by random.org is now on CRAN. The R 3.2.0 release brought the change to use an internal method="libcurl" which we are using if available; else the curl::curl() method added in release 0.2.3 is used. We ... [Read more...]

A few days ago, Erik released a new version of his Annoy library -- a small, fast, and lightweight C++ template header library for approximate nearest neighbours -- which now no longer requires Boost. While I don't mind Boost (actually, quite the op... [Read more...]

The new release 0.11.5 of Rcpp arrived on the CRAN network for GNU R yesterday; the corresponding Debian package has also been uploaded. Rcpp has become the most popular way of enhancing GNU R with C++ code. As of today, 373 packages on CRAN depend o... [Read more...]

A new minor release 5.100.1 of Armadillo was released by Conrad yesterday. Armadillo is a powerful and expressive C++ template library for linear algebra aiming towards a good balance between speed and ease of use with a syntax deliberately close to a Matlab. Our corresponding RcppArmadillo release 0.5.100.1.0 also reached CRAN and ... [Read more...]

A hotfix release for the Finance-YahooQuote Perl module on CPAN is now available. Available Yahoo! Finance decided to change the base URL. My thanks to Nicola Chiapolini who not only noticed but also sent me the one-line patch fixing this:

--- YahooQuote.pm~      2010-03-27 01:44:10.000000000 +0100
+++ YahooQuote.pm       2015-04-29 11:31:20.407926674 +0200
@@ -34,7 +34,7 @@
 $VERSION = '0.24';
 
 ## these variables govern what type of quote the modules is retrieving
-$QURLbase = "http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csvr?e=.csv&f=";
+$QURLbase = "http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?e=.csv&f=";
 $QURLformat = "snl1d1t1c1p2va2bapomwerr1dyj1x";        # default up to 0.19
 $QURLextended = "s7t8e7e8e9r6r7r5b4p6p5j4m3m4";        # new in 0.20
 $QURLrealtime = "b2b3k2k1c6m2j3"; # also new in 0.20

If need be, edit your file YahooQuote.pm by ... [Read more...]

A small project I worked on during the last few weeks has now come together in new package RcppTOML which arrived on CRAN yesterday. It provides R with a reader for TOML files. TOML stands for Tom's Obvious Markup Language. And before you roll your eyes, glance at the TOML ... [Read more...]

A new major version 5.000 of Armadillo was released by Conrad a couple of days ago. Armadillo is a powerful and expressive C++ template library for linear algebra aiming towards a good balance between speed and ease of use with a syntax deliberately close to a Matlab. This version brings several ... [Read more...]

Background R relies on package repositories for initial installation of a package via install.packages(). A crucial second step is update.packages(): For all currently installed packages, a list of available updates is constructed or offered for either one-by-one or bulk updates. This keeps the local packages in sync with ... [Read more...]