header only and dependency

[romainfrancois]

It would be nice if RcppArmadillo was header only and did not depend on Rcpp. The dependency can be resolved in client packages, e.g. a package can choose to use the Rcpp implementation in Rcpp11 plus armadillo from RcppArmadillo.

The alternative is for me to fork RcppArmadillo.

[romainfrancois]

This means letting go of fastLm and other things in src/. Not sure this fits with the maintenance policy. If it does not, then close the issue and expect a fork.

One of the plus is that the combo Rcpp11 + RcppArmadillo could leverage C++11 capabilities of armadillo.

[eddelbuettel]

R(-devel) has supported C++11 for a while. With R-devel today, which becomes R 3.1.0 in six weeks on April 10, you only need the USE_CXX1X define in src/Makevars which I built upon to turn on Armadillo's C++11 support. (It's commented out now in the repo, but just remove the one comment, build a tarball and use it via R-devel locally or via win-builder).

I also do not see R Core moving away from having the toggle in src/ which makes the quest of removing all files from src/ a little less compelling. I am in no hurry here and suggest that we wait til R 3.1.0 is out, let the dust settle a little and review then -- no need to rush things.

As for removing src/ from RcppArmadillo and RcppEigen: we could, of course, move fastLm() to add-on example packages. But as @dmbates said in RcppCore/RcppEigen#3, we do have these documented in published papers and the book, so user-facing changes of documented interfaces and functionality must be merited. I don't see that quite yet.

[romainfrancois]

Ok. I have my answer. Closing this now