Re: [RFC] ob-reticulate: R+Python interface from Babel

[Kyle Meyer <kyle@kyleam.com>]

Jack Kamm writes:

> Hi all,
>
> Reticulate is an R package for interfacing between R and Python. It
> allows accessing objects in a Python session from R and vice
> versa. See https://rstudio.github.io/reticulate/ for more info about
> it.
>
> I've written a small patch for using reticulate from org-babel. It
> allows creating a source block of lang "reticulate", which behaves as
> Python for font highlighting and editing, but is executed in an R
> session via reticulate.

Neat, thanks for sharing.

> I'm wondering whether this should go into org-mode, or whether to
> package this separately. I'm also curious whether this would be useful
> to anyone here. Any feedback is appreciated.

It'd be good to hear from others, but in my view this would be fine to
add to Org proper.

I will say that in general new Babel libraries make me nervous.  My
impression is that Babel brings in a good number of bug reports, and a
new library is adding surface to that area [*] while not necessarily
adding eyes and hands.  Of course that worry doesn't apply here, as
you're already taking care of ob-python.

  [*] And that surface can be quite challenging to deal with because it
      is not just Elisp code; it brings in a whole outside language that
      other developers may have no clue about.

> +;;; Code:
> +
> +(require 'ob-R)
> +(require 'ob-python)
> +
> +(defalias 'org-babel-edit-prep:reticulate 'org-babel-edit-prep:R)
> +
> +(defun org-babel-execute:reticulate (body params)
> +  (let* ((tmp-src-file (org-babel-temp-file "reticulate-"))
> +	 (result-type (cdr (assq :result-type params))))
> +    (with-temp-file tmp-src-file (insert body))
> +    (org-babel-execute:R
> +     (format (concat "reticulate::py_run_string(\"%s\")"
> +		     (when (equal result-type 'value) "
> +reticulate::py$`__org_babel_python_final`"))
> +	     (format org-babel-python--eval-ast
> +		     (org-babel-process-file-name
> +		      tmp-src-file 'noquote)))
> +     params)))
> +
> +(provide 'ob-reticulate)

Well, that's pleasantly few lines of code :)