This is a Heroku buildpack for applications which use R for statistical computing and CRAN for R packages.

R is ‘GNU S’, a freely available language and environment for statistical computing and graphics which provides a wide variety of statistical and graphical techniques: linear and nonlinear modelling, statistical tests, time series analysis, classification, clustering, etc. Please consult the R project homepage for further information.

CRAN is a network of ftp and web servers around the world that store identical, up-to-date, versions of code and documentation for R.

Example usage:

$ ls
init.r prog1.r prog2.r ...

$ heroku create --stack cedar --buildpack http://github.com/virtualstaticvoid/heroku-buildpack-r.git

$ git push heroku master
...
-----> Heroku receiving push
-----> Fetching custom buildpack
-----> R app detected
-----> Vendoring R x.xx.x
       Executing init.r script
...
-----> R successfully installed

The buildpack will detect your app makes use of R if it has the init.r file in the root. The R runtime is vendored into your slug, and includes the gcc compiler for fortran support.

To reference a specific version of the build pack, add the Git branch or tag name to the end of the build pack URL.

$ heroku create --stack cedar --buildpack http://github.com/virtualstaticvoid/heroku-buildpack-r.git#master

During the slug compilation process, the init.r R file is executed. Put code in this file to install any packages you may require. See the Installing-packages for details. The list of available packages can be found at http://cran.r-project.org.

# Example `init.r` file

install.packages("nlme", dependencies = TRUE)

R packages can also be included in your project source and installed when the init.r file is executed.

install.packages("optional-path-to-packages/local-r-package-file.tar.gz", repos=NULL, type="source")

You can also run the R console application as follows:

$ heroku run R

Type q() to exit the console when you are finished.

Note that the Heroku slug is read-only, so any changes you make during the session will be discarded.

This buildpack can be used in conjunction with other supported language stacks on Heroku by using the heroku-buildpack-multi buildpack.

See the example test applications which show how to use R from the console and a simple Ruby application.

The binaries used by the buildpack are for R 2.15.1, and are hosted on s3://heroku-buildpack-r/R-2.15.1-binaries.tar.gz

See the guide for building the R binaries yourself.

Due to the size of the R runtime, the slug size on Heroku, without any additional packages or program code, is approximately 98Mb. If additional R packages are installed by the init.r script then the slug size will increase.