Re: packaging stan

[Ross Boylan <rossboylan@stanfordalumni.org>]

On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 1:25 PM, Michael Banck <mbanck@debian.org> wrote:

...

It sounds like rstan is an R wrapper around stan?  Then I would assume
it should be possible to build/use rstan without the full stan source
being around.

I believe that's correct.  At runtime I think rstan needs stan and its libraries.  Hmm, I guess that means it may need the headers at build time.

Is stan building a shared or static library?

Yes.  Not sure which.

 If not, that may be the
missing link between the two.  Requiring the stan source be present when
building rstan (as a seperate source package) will not work or only work
with lots of trouble I do not think is worth it.  So if there is no
library being built or other support, combining both into one source
package might be an option.

One indication this is alright would be that both stan and rstan are
released in lockstep.

My understanding, which may be wrong, is that the stan system includes a "compiler" (stanc) that converts a stan program to C++ and then builds an executable from it.  The executable, and maybe stanc, need the stan library to run.

I think the rstan R package invokes stanc  behind the scenes and builds a library dynamically loadable in R.  Or possibly it just runs the compiled stan code. 

Ross