initGRASS: Initiate GRASS session

In rgrass7: Interface Between GRASS 7 Geographical Information System and R

Description

Run GRASS interface in an R session not started within GRASS. In general, most users will use initGRASS in throwaway locations, to use GRASS modules on R objects without the need to define and populate a location. The function initializes environment variables used by GRASS, the .gisrc used by GRASS for further environment variables, and a temporary location.

The locking functions are used internally, but are exposed for experienced R/GRASS scripters needing to use the GRASS module “g.mapset” through initGRASS in an existing GRASS location. In particular, “g.mapset” may leave a .gislock file in the current MAPSET, so it may be important to call unlink_.gislock to clean up before quitting the R session. remove_GISRC may be used to try to remove the file given in the “GISRC” environment variable if created by initGRASS with argument remove_GISRC= TRUE.

Usage

initGRASS(gisBase, home, SG, gisDbase, addon_base, location, mapset,
  override = FALSE, use_g.dirseps.exe = TRUE, pid, remove_GISRC=FALSE)
get.GIS_LOCK()
set.GIS_LOCK(pid)
unset.GIS_LOCK()
unlink_.gislock()
remove_GISRC()

Arguments

gisBase	The directory path to GRASS binaries and libraries, containing bin and lib subdirectories among others
home	The directory in which to create the .gisrc file; defaults to $HOME on Unix systems and to USERPROFILE on Windows systems; can usually be set to tempdir()
SG	An optional SpatialGrid object to define the DEFAULT_WIND of the temporary location
gisDbase	if missing, tempdir() will be used; GRASS GISDBASE directory for the working session
addon_base	if missing, assumed to be “$HOME/.grass7/addons” on Unix-like platforms, on MS Windows “%APPDATA%\GRASS7\addons”, and checked for existence
location	if missing, basename(tempfile()) will be used; GRASS location directory for the working session
mapset	if missing, basename(tempfile()) will be used; GRASS mapset directory for the working session
override	default FALSE, set to TRUE if accidental trashing of GRASS .gisrc files and locations is not a problem
use_g.dirseps.exe	default TRUE; when TRUE appears to work for WinGRASS Native binaries, when FALSE for QGIS GRASS binaries; ignored on other platforms.
pid	default as.integer(round(runif(1, 1, 1000))), integer used to identify GIS_LOCK; the value here is arbitrary, but probably should be set correctly
remove_GISRC	default FALSE; if TRUE, attempt to unlink the temporary file named in the “GISRC” environment variable when the R session terminates or when this package is unloaded

Details

The function establishes an out-of-GRASS working environment providing GRASS commands with the environment variable support required, and may also provide a temporary location for use until the end of the running R session if the home argument is set to tempdir(), and the gisDbase argument is not given. Running gmeta6 shows where the location is, should it be desired to archive it before leaving R.

Value

The function runs gmeta6 before returning the current values of the running GRASS session that it provides.

Note

If any package command fails with a UTF-8 error from the XML package, try using setXMLencoding to work around the problem that GRASS modules declare –interface-description output as UTF-8 without ensuring that it is (French is of 6.4.0 RC5 latin1).

Author(s)

Roger S. Bivand, e-mail: [e-mail]

See Also

gmeta

Examples

## Not run: 
initGRASS("/usr/bin/grass-7.0.0", home=tempdir())
initGRASS("C:/GRASS", home=tempdir())

## End(Not run)

rgrass7 documentation built on May 2, 2019, 5:55 p.m.