Setting up R.NET on Mac

This is an overview of the steps to set up R.NET on a Mac running OS X Maverics that worked for me.

Step 1: Install dependencies

Mono in 64-bit mode needs to be compiled from source. For this, follow instructions from the Mono website.

Before the actuall build, it is necessary to install autoconf, automake and libtool.

PREFIX=/usr/local

# Ensure you have write permissions to /usr/local
mkdir $PREFIX
sudo chown -R `whoami` $PREFIX

# Download and build dependencies
mkdir ~/Build
cd ~/Build
curl -O ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.69.tar.gz
curl -O ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.14.tar.gz
curl -O ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/libtool/libtool-2.4.2.tar.gz

for i in *.tar.gz; do tar xzvf $i; done
for i in */configure; do (cd `dirname $i`; ./configure --prefix=$PREFIX && make && make install); done

Add their locations to PATH so that the Mono installer finds them.

export PATH=$PREFIX/bin:$PATH

Step 2: Install 64-bit Mono

Now we can install 64-bit Mono into a folder MONO_PREFIX:

MONO_PREFIX=$PREFIX/mono64
git clone https://github.com/mono/mono.git
cd mono
./autogen.sh --prefix=$MONO_PREFIX --disable-nls 
make
make install

Now we can run Mono in 64-bit using /usr/local/mono64/bin/mono.

Optional Create a symbolic link to the new 64-bit Mono installation.

ln -s /usr/local/mono64 /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/3.6.1

Step 3: Install R and set up R.NET

Download and install R. R for Mac is 64-bit by default.

We also need to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH and PATH to let R.NET know the location of libR.dylib.

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Libraries/:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
export PATH=/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Libraries/:$PATH

Step 4: Setting up Xamarin studio

In this step we set up Xamarin studio to run F# interactive in 64-bit which will allow us to use R.NET interactively. We can change how Xamarin studio runs F# interactive under Preferences > Other > F# Settings > F# interactive.

By default, this points to a script file /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/3.4.0/bin/fsharpi which uses 32-bit version of Mono to run F# interactive. Create a copy of the script file and edit the last line to call 64-bit Mono and F# interactive for any CPU:

$EXEC /usr/local/mono64/bin/mono $DEBUG $MONO_OPTIONS /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/3.4.0/lib/mono/4.0/fsiAnyCpu.exe --exename:$(basename $0) "$@"

Save the new script file and enter its location into the Xamarin settings for F# interactive.

Step 5: Run R.NET

Now it should be possible to run R.NET in Xamarin studio. It seems that R.NET still requires user to specify location of R libraries. This is a simple test code:

 1: 
 2: 
 3: 
 4: 
 5: 
 6: 
 7: 
 8: 
 9: 
10: 
11: 
12: 
13: 
14: 
15: 
16: 
17: 
18: 
19: 
20: 
21: 
22: 
23: 
24: 
25: 
26: 

// Location of R libraries
#I "/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Libraries/"

#r "packages/R.NET.Community.1.5.15/lib/net40/RDotNet.dll"
#r "packages/R.NET.Community.1.5.15/lib/net40/RDotNet.NativeLibrary.dll"
open RDotNet
open System

// Pass location of libR.dylib to R engine
let dllStr = "/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Libraries/libR.dylib"
let engine = REngine.GetInstance(dll=dllStr)
engine.Initialize()

// Run a simple t-test

let group1 = engine.CreateNumericVector([| 30.02; 29.99; 30.11; 29.97; 30.01; 29.99 |])
engine.SetSymbol("group1", group1)

// Direct parsing from R script.
let group2 = engine.Evaluate("group2 <- c(29.89, 29.93, 29.72, 29.98, 30.02, 29.98)").AsNumeric()

// Test difference of mean and get the P-value.
let testResult = engine.Evaluate("t.test(group1, group2)").AsList()
let p = testResult.["p.value"].AsNumeric().[0]

Console.WriteLine("P-value = {0:0.000}", p)