5 ms·

RStudio,a new IDE for R

271 points by agconway 16y ago

zaph0d 16y ago
Looks good, but it's crashing on my Mac OS X (Snow Leopard). Any idea how I can debug/fix this issue?
- jcheng5 16y ago
  We're on this over at support.rstudio.org: http://support.rstudio.org/help/discussions/problems/19-immediate-crash-on-startup-os-x-1066-r-2121 http://support.rstudio.org/help/discussions/problems/19-imme...
ludwigvan 16y ago
Really impressed! I was looking for the Buy button when I saw the link to github.
dacort 16y ago
Completely off-topic, but the first thing I thought of when I saw this was R-Studio, an old file/disk recovery software. I was surprised to see that the R IDE has a trademark on "RStudio" (in both US and Canada) given that the former has been around for at least a decade. I guess R-Tools just never cared to file for a TM?
- dualogy 16y ago
  Ianal but afaik (TM) is by definition non-registered (or filed). (R) is. (That's why I (tm) my commercial stuff but I don't (R) any.)
olalonde 16y ago
AGPL license, interesting. I suppose the plan is to monetize with a hosting/SaaS service? Edit: Found the answer on their blog: > RStudio is also a company, and we plan to sell services (support, training, consulting, hosting) related to the open-source software we distribute.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  I'd be curious to hear their calculus for why they thought this services route would be more lucrative than selling the product and services. It seems like the type of product that people who would balk at purchasing it would be the same type to balkat most types of services listed (except maybe hosting).
  - jcheng 16y ago
    For us, it was never about which approach was more lucrative. We want RStudio to be the de facto IDE for R. How could it be anything but open source?
    - ciupicri 16y ago
      Yes, but there are multiple open source licenses, including, but not limited to, GLP (which is used by R), AGPL, LGPL and BSD.
  - TalGalili 16y ago
    Also notice there are other non-open-source alternatives such as the IDE of Revolution. I am very happy to see the way this is turning out...
equark 16y ago
Very slick UI. How is this done? Is the main UI HTML/Javscript or QT? I guess it's good that I can't immediately tell.
- jcheng 16y ago
  Thanks! It's HTML/Javascript. (Note that you can use it as a webapp, we couldn't do that with Qt obviously)
  - equark 16y ago
    But you make native dialog calls too? Care to expand on how Qt, GWT, pure Javascript mix? I think you guys have really pulled off something great in terms of cross platform support and the web.
    - jcheng 16y ago
      > But you make native dialog calls too? Yes, sometimes we call back into native code, especially to do things like file dialogs that you really prefer to be native. > Care to expand on how Qt, GWT, pure Javascript mix? I think you guys have really pulled off something great in terms of cross platform support and the web. Thanks! We use QtWebkit as the container for our UI. QtWebkit has hooks to let Qt code execute JavaScript in the page, and you can also inject Qt objects into the window object so JS can call into it. GWT's extensible compilation pipeline actually lets us create stub interfaces in GWT that mirror the Qt classes we want to call, and automatically generate the glue code at compile time. At some point I will blog about this in more detail at http://jcheng.wordpress.com http://jcheng.wordpress.com. In the meantime feel free to peruse our source code at http://github.com/rstudio/rstudio http://github.com/rstudio/rstudio and reach out if you have specific questions.
      - fxj 16y ago
        hm tried it on mac snow leopard and all i get is an empty white frame. :(( i have kde3 installed on the mac. might that cause some problems?
euroclydon 16y ago
I was browsing through the web server implementation: https://github.com/rstudio/rstudio/tree/master/src/cpp/core/http https://github.com/rstudio/rstudio/tree/master/src/cpp/core/... Can anyone familiar with writing web servers in C comment on this? For instance, how full featured is it? How useful is the code for learning about web servers?
- jcheng 16y ago
  You're better off looking at the Boost ASIO examples here, which the RStudio code was originally based on. http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_45_0/doc/html/boost_asio/examples.html http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_45_0/doc/html/boost_asio/exa...
kindlyviking 16y ago
RStudio's binary is named 'rdesktop'. Oops! Although it's not in the default PATH, so it could be worse :)
- kindlyviking 16y ago
  Looks like there's a bug report already http://bit.ly/epH9kt http://bit.ly/epH9kt
- someone_here 16y ago
  It's strange and awesome how the linux world always works out these collisions even though there's no governing body or group.
moondowner 16y ago
The UI pretty similar to RKWard (http://rkward.sourceforge.net/ http://rkward.sourceforge.net/), which is according to me the best IDE, especially for Linux users. P.S. Someone should make a comparison between these two IDEs.
- djacobs 16y ago
  In my experience, RKWard frequently crashes when loaded with modest datasets (1700 data points or so for me). I wonder if RStudio has the same memory problems. If not, I'd be willing to give it a shot.
  - moondowner 16y ago
    I don't have any problems, but I use it mostly as a code editor, I don't use the built in table/data editor.
js4all 16y ago
I find it strange, that I have to download and install a 40 Meg statistics package to run an IDE.
- jdminhbg 16y ago
  It's not that strange when you realize it's an IDE for a statistics processing language.
dlib 16y ago
I use MatLab mostly for statistical purposes, together with EViews (statistical software geared towards econometrics). This could certainly ease the transition towards R and replace both aforementioned tools.
lightoverhead 16y ago
Cool stuff. But it seems lacking manual to run it. I would like to see manuals about how to build it, run it at command line and etc. Better docs can really add a lot attractions. Anyway, thank you for providing such as beautiful tool. It has been years that R under linux has no such a good IDE.
mwexler 16y ago
Wow... who knew that JJ Allaire, maker of (among other things) the ColdFusion web development system, also liked playing with R? http://www.rstudio.org/docs/about http://www.rstudio.org/docs/about
jamesbkel 16y ago
This looks great. Can't wait to dig into it some more. Also excited about the timing... next week I'm starting a new position at a research co where most of my colleagues work in SAS (vs. my preference for R). This may be just the thing to help win some converts :)
gilesc 16y ago
This is absolutely gorgeous. The only thing the standard RGui has on it is basic emacs/bash-ish keybindings (C-e, C-a, etc.) for navigation.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
stevefarnworth 16y ago
Didn't know anything about R until seeing this post, downloaded the Windows binary and within the hour I was producing graphs. Much easier to get into than MatLab (used it at uni, which is probably why I have an aversion to it!). Really nice bit of kit (as is the R language), and it's free!

271 points by agconway 16y ago

zaph0d 16y ago

Looks good, but it's crashing on my Mac OS X (Snow Leopard). Any idea how I can debug/fix this issue?

jcheng5 16y ago
We're on this over at support.rstudio.org: http://support.rstudio.org/help/discussions/problems/19-immediate-crash-on-startup-os-x-1066-r-2121 http://support.rstudio.org/help/discussions/problems/19-imme...

ludwigvan 16y ago

Really impressed! I was looking for the Buy button when I saw the link to github.

dacort 16y ago

Completely off-topic, but the first thing I thought of when I saw this was R-Studio, an old file/disk recovery software. I was surprised to see that the R IDE has a trademark on "RStudio" (in both US and Canada) given that the former has been around for at least a decade. I guess R-Tools just never cared to file for a TM?

dualogy 16y ago
Ianal but afaik (TM) is by definition non-registered (or filed). (R) is. (That's why I (tm) my commercial stuff but I don't (R) any.)

olalonde 16y ago

AGPL license, interesting. I suppose the plan is to monetize with a hosting/SaaS service? Edit: Found the answer on their blog: > RStudio is also a company, and we plan to sell services (support, training, consulting, hosting) related to the open-source software we distribute.

kenjackson 16y ago
I'd be curious to hear their calculus for why they thought this services route would be more lucrative than selling the product and services. It seems like the type of product that people who would balk at purchasing it would be the same type to balkat most types of services listed (except maybe hosting).
- jcheng 16y ago
  For us, it was never about which approach was more lucrative. We want RStudio to be the de facto IDE for R. How could it be anything but open source?
  - ciupicri 16y ago
    Yes, but there are multiple open source licenses, including, but not limited to, GLP (which is used by R), AGPL, LGPL and BSD.
- TalGalili 16y ago
  Also notice there are other non-open-source alternatives such as the IDE of Revolution. I am very happy to see the way this is turning out...

equark 16y ago

Very slick UI. How is this done? Is the main UI HTML/Javscript or QT? I guess it's good that I can't immediately tell.

jcheng 16y ago
Thanks! It's HTML/Javascript. (Note that you can use it as a webapp, we couldn't do that with Qt obviously)
- equark 16y ago
  But you make native dialog calls too? Care to expand on how Qt, GWT, pure Javascript mix? I think you guys have really pulled off something great in terms of cross platform support and the web.
  - jcheng 16y ago
    > But you make native dialog calls too? Yes, sometimes we call back into native code, especially to do things like file dialogs that you really prefer to be native. > Care to expand on how Qt, GWT, pure Javascript mix? I think you guys have really pulled off something great in terms of cross platform support and the web. Thanks! We use QtWebkit as the container for our UI. QtWebkit has hooks to let Qt code execute JavaScript in the page, and you can also inject Qt objects into the window object so JS can call into it. GWT's extensible compilation pipeline actually lets us create stub interfaces in GWT that mirror the Qt classes we want to call, and automatically generate the glue code at compile time. At some point I will blog about this in more detail at http://jcheng.wordpress.com http://jcheng.wordpress.com. In the meantime feel free to peruse our source code at http://github.com/rstudio/rstudio http://github.com/rstudio/rstudio and reach out if you have specific questions.
    - fxj 16y ago
      hm tried it on mac snow leopard and all i get is an empty white frame. :(( i have kde3 installed on the mac. might that cause some problems?

euroclydon 16y ago

I was browsing through the web server implementation: https://github.com/rstudio/rstudio/tree/master/src/cpp/core/http https://github.com/rstudio/rstudio/tree/master/src/cpp/core/... Can anyone familiar with writing web servers in C comment on this? For instance, how full featured is it? How useful is the code for learning about web servers?

jcheng 16y ago
You're better off looking at the Boost ASIO examples here, which the RStudio code was originally based on. http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_45_0/doc/html/boost_asio/examples.html http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_45_0/doc/html/boost_asio/exa...

kindlyviking 16y ago

RStudio's binary is named 'rdesktop'. Oops! Although it's not in the default PATH, so it could be worse :)

kindlyviking 16y ago
Looks like there's a bug report already http://bit.ly/epH9kt http://bit.ly/epH9kt
someone_here 16y ago
It's strange and awesome how the linux world always works out these collisions even though there's no governing body or group.

moondowner 16y ago

The UI pretty similar to RKWard (http://rkward.sourceforge.net/ http://rkward.sourceforge.net/), which is according to me the best IDE, especially for Linux users. P.S. Someone should make a comparison between these two IDEs.

djacobs 16y ago
In my experience, RKWard frequently crashes when loaded with modest datasets (1700 data points or so for me). I wonder if RStudio has the same memory problems. If not, I'd be willing to give it a shot.
- moondowner 16y ago
  I don't have any problems, but I use it mostly as a code editor, I don't use the built in table/data editor.

js4all 16y ago

I find it strange, that I have to download and install a 40 Meg statistics package to run an IDE.

jdminhbg 16y ago
It's not that strange when you realize it's an IDE for a statistics processing language.

dlib 16y ago

I use MatLab mostly for statistical purposes, together with EViews (statistical software geared towards econometrics). This could certainly ease the transition towards R and replace both aforementioned tools.

lightoverhead 16y ago

Cool stuff. But it seems lacking manual to run it. I would like to see manuals about how to build it, run it at command line and etc. Better docs can really add a lot attractions. Anyway, thank you for providing such as beautiful tool. It has been years that R under linux has no such a good IDE.

mwexler 16y ago

Wow... who knew that JJ Allaire, maker of (among other things) the ColdFusion web development system, also liked playing with R? http://www.rstudio.org/docs/about http://www.rstudio.org/docs/about

jamesbkel 16y ago

This looks great. Can't wait to dig into it some more. Also excited about the timing... next week I'm starting a new position at a research co where most of my colleagues work in SAS (vs. my preference for R). This may be just the thing to help win some converts :)

gilesc 16y ago

This is absolutely gorgeous. The only thing the standard RGui has on it is basic emacs/bash-ish keybindings (C-e, C-a, etc.) for navigation.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

stevefarnworth 16y ago

Didn't know anything about R until seeing this post, downloaded the Windows binary and within the hour I was producing graphs. Much easier to get into than MatLab (used it at uni, which is probably why I have an aversion to it!). Really nice bit of kit (as is the R language), and it's free!