Greetings rpy2 developers,
I am the primary developer of an open source Python package called Marine
Geospatial Ecology Tools (http://code.env.duke.edu/projects/mget). These
tools perform various jobs that are useful to marine ecologists. Many of the
tools are designed to be invoked from ArcGIS, a desktop GIS application that
runs on Windows.
To date, we have had good success accessing R using rpy. Thank you very much
for making this package freely available. But we noted last year that rpy is
no longer being maintained, and rpy2 is the new replacement. It will be a
big job for us to switch to rpy2, so we have been delaying the switch. In
the interim, we've been compiling rpy every time a new R release has come
out. This is probably increasingly risky, so we're becoming more motivated
to make the switch. In addition, there is an ArcGIS 9.3 / rpy compatibility
problem that is pretty inconvenient. Basically we are wondering if this
problem exists with rpy2.
The problem was discussed last year; see
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail
<http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=453021&aid=2062627&group_i
d=48422> &atid=453021&aid=2062627&group_id=48422. In brief: Every time
ArcGIS 9.3 runs a Python-based tool, it initializes a new instance of the
Python interpreter in the ArcGIS process (typically ArcCatalog.exe or
ArcMap.exe). The interpreter instance eventually loads the rpy extension
module (e.g. _rpy2070.dll). The interpreter exits when the tool completes.
But this does not cause the rpy extension module to be unloaded from the
process, and when ArcGIS runs the tool a second time, creating a new Python
interpreter, rpy fails to initialize.
In last year's bug report, lgautier mentioned that "the problem was fixed a
few weeks ago" (i.e. last summer). Is it correct then that this procedure of
initializing the interpreter, using rpy2, shutting down the interpreter, and
so on, can be done indefinitely from a single process without any ill
effects?
Thanks for your help! And thanks again to you guys for developing this great
reusable software.
Jason
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