duckdb R package

Installation from CRAN

install.packages("duckdb")

Building

The default build compiles a release version from an amalgamation.

cd tools/rpkg
R CMD INSTALL .

Optional extensions can be enabled by passing them (comma-separated, if there is more than one) to the environment variable DUCKDB_R_EXTENSIONS:

DUCKDB_R_EXTENSIONS=tpch R CMD INSTALL .

Development

To build the R package, you first need to install the dependencies, these are located in tools/rpkg/dependencies.R Navigate over to the tools/rpkg folder and run Rscript dependencies.R

For development, setting the DUCKDB_R_DEBUG environment variable enables incremental debugging builds for the R package.

cd tools/rpkg
DUCKDB_R_DEBUG=1 R CMD INSTALL .

This also works for devtools:

Sys.setenv(DUCKDB_R_DEBUG = "1")
pkgload::load_all()

Add the following to your .Renviron to make this the default:

DUCKDB_R_DEBUG=1

If you do this, remember to use --vanilla for building release builds.

Developing with Extensions

If you wish to build or add extensions to the R package you first need to build duckdb with the extension_static_build flag and move the desired extension to a location where it won't be modified by other build scripts. The following commands allow you to add the httpfs extension to a duckdb R build. See the extension ReadMe for more information about extensions

cd duckdb/
EXTENSION_STATIC_BUILD=1 make
mv ./build/release/extension/httpfs/httpfs.duckdb_extension {{untouched_path}}/httpfs-extension.duckdb_extension

Then in R

library(“duckdb”)
con <- DBI::dbConnect(duckdb(config=list(“allow_unsigned_extensions”=“true”)))
dbExecute(con, “LOAD {{untouched_path}}/httpfs-extension.duckdb_extension")