Math. engine

The math. engine is a mandatory component for the frontend. It is used for all numerical evaluations, as well as formulas or functions interpretation. It relies on the [R] language, which is available through Rsession library, which holds many implementations:

  • “true” R (3.5, 3.6 and 4.x), through Rserve (locally spawned automatically if necessary, fully compatible with legacy R),
  • Renjin 3.5 (lower compatibility, but still very good),
  • and default R2js, which is on-the-fly R translation to math.js, with lower compatibility but full BSD licence.

It is also possible to host this R+Rserve components on a remote machine, and to configure the frontend consistently using the R.server= key in Frontend configuration file.

For that purpose:

  • [R] is available for following systems, in both 32 and 64 architectures :
    • Windows
    • Apple OS X
    • Linux ((We recommend to use the previous repository of R-project, instead of your distro default one. Usually, the common Linux distributions are not up-to-date and lead to some incompatibility.))
  • proceed with Rserve installation, one of these ways:
    • automatically at first startup of Funz (regular way)
    • manually using install.packages("Rserve") command from your R environment previously installed (internet connection needed)
    • manually with the installation archive and then using some install.packages("C:\tmp\Rserve_1.8-xxx.zip", repos=NULL) command from R environment (internet connection NOT needed)

Alternatively, using Linux you can try the apt or yum packages manager, but take care that you must use a recent enough version of Rserve.

Once R+Rserve are installed on a erver, you can setup basic scripts:

  • ‘/opt/Rserve/Rserved’: 
    #!/bin/bash
echo " * Starting Rserve ..."
start-stop-daemon --start --chuid myuser --exec /opt/Rserve/Rserve.sh > /tmp/Rserve.log 2>&1 &
echo " * Rserve is running."
exit
  • ‘/opt/Rserve/Rserve.sh’: 
    #!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/R CMD /usr/lib/R/bin/Rserve --vanilla --RS-conf /opt/Rserve/Rserve.conf
  • ‘/opt/Rserve/Rserve.conf’: 
    remote enable
fileio enable
  • and then enable at startup: ‘‘ln -s /opt/Rserve/Rserved /etc/rc2.d/S99Rserve’’


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