README.md
In SnakeCharmR: R and Python Integration

Modern overhaul of rPython, read more on the motivation and benefits of using it in this blog post.

Many thanks to Bob Rudis for basically teaching me how to write a modern R package and getting this off the ground.

In order to compile SnakeCharmR, you'll need to have Python >= 2.7 installed. Make sure you also have the development libraries and include files, the operating system package names will vary with your specific Linux distribution.

By default SnakeCharmR will look for python-config and python commands in the PATH. The former will be used to determine the location of the libraries and headers necessary to compile SnakeCharmR.

In systems where several Python versions coexist, you can force a different version to be used by setting an environment variable SNAKECHARMR_PYTHON_VERSION to either the major version or major and minor versions.

For example, if you set SNAKECHARMR_PYTHON_VERSION=3.2 then Python 3.2 will be used. In this example, you will need to ensure:

that python3.2 and python3.2-config exist and are in the PATH;
that a libpython3.2.so exists at the locations indicated by python3.2-config --ldflags.

In order to compile this on Windows, make sure you meet the following requirements:

Install the latest version of Rtools;
Ensure the python command from the desired Python version is the first one in your PATH.

If you want to use the (very outdated) Python bundled with Rtools on a 64-bit system, for example, you would need to add c:\Rtools\mingw_64\opt\bin to your PATH and possibly set PYTHONHOME to c:\Rtools\mingw_64\opt.

It is recommended, however, that you install and use the official Python distribution for Windows.

Many thanks to mattfidler for the help in getting this to work properly on Windows.