Are there any currently major roadblocks on creating/maintaining an interface to R, such as ROctave?

[Carlos Paradis]

Hi,

I currently have a large package in Octave that has some sizeable functionality which depends on R packages. As it is, my octave package interfaces the R packages via Octave's unix function call (in essence, the R package dumps a single final analysis .csv, which is then loaded in Octave).

However, this is not very flexible: Much functionality of the R package is left out via functions, for example, which could be used in Octave. 

1) Trying to find a better way to go about it, I stumbled upon DSC 2003, 10 Years of Octave - Recent Developments and Plans for the Future. Section 2.2.4 discusses some limitations 17 years ago, but I wonder if they still persist (or worsened): https://www.r-project.org/conferences/DSC-2003/Proceedings/EatonRawlings.pdf

ROctave: http://www.omegahat.net/ROctave/ (last updated 18 years ago).

2) I'd also be interested in knowing if there are any other alternatives to just using unix. Oct-files appeared a possibility using Cpp to import R, and then Octave to Import Cpp, but if I understand it right, it would require individually coding each R package function now and in the long run. 

Thank you,

cp