Installation details

The polars package can be installed from R-multiverse.

Some platforms can install pre-compiled binaries, and others will need to build from source.

How to install

From GitHub

Installing from the GitHub repository can be done using the {remotes} package’s functions.

Sys.setenv(NOT_CRAN = "true") # Enable installation with pre-built Rust library binary, or enable Rust caching
remotes::install_github("pola-rs/r-polars@fe76af47c482835162e4c5a0e20d20b1fd956dc2") # Install from a specific commit

Details of installation

Pre-built Rust library binaries

If one of the following environment variables is set, a pre-built Rust library binary will be tried to be used before building the Rust source.

  • NOT_CRAN="true"
  • MY_UNIVERSE is not empty (This environment variable is set by R-universe)
  • LIBR_POLARS_BUILD="false" (This is prioritized, so if you want to force a source build, set LIBR_POLARS_BUILD="true")

By default, the pre-built Rust library binary is downloaded from the URL recorded in tools/lib-sums.tsv. If tools/lib-sums.tsv does not exist, or the corresponding URL does not exist, or the hash of the downloaded file does not match the recorded one, it falls back to building from source.

If you want to use a pre-built Rust library binary that exists locally, set the LIBR_POLARS_PATH environment variable to the path to the binary. For example (on Bash):

export LIBR_POLARS_BUILD="false"
export LIBR_POLARS_PATH="/tmp/libr_polars.a"
Rscript -e 'install.packages("polars", repos = "https://community.r-multiverse.org", type = "source")'

Rust build time options

r-polars Rust library has some feature flags that affect the R package features. These flags are set at compile time, and cannot be changed at runtime.

The features enabled in the compiled Rust library are shown by the polars_info() function.

library(polars)
polars_info()
#> Polars R package version : 1.2.1
#> Rust Polars crate version: 0.50.0
#> 
#> Thread pool size: 4 
#> 
#> Features:            
#> nightly TRUE

At this time, the following environment variables can be used to change the Rust library build time options.

Features

The feature flags can be set by the LIBR_POLARS_FEATURES environment variable, which will be passed to the --features option of the cargo build command. For example, to enable the nightly feature, set the environment variable as like LIBR_POLARS_FEATURES="nightly".

  • nightly for nightly toolchain features and SIMD. If this feature is enabled, the nightly Rust toolchain will be downloaded and used. (By the src/rust/rust-toolchain.toml file)

Profile

The profile can be set by the LIBR_POLARS_PROFILE environment variable. For example, to build with more optimization, set the environment variable as like LIBR_POLARS_PROFILE="dist-release".

Minimum Supported Rust Version (MSRV)

The minimum supported Rust version (MSRV) is declared in the src/rust/Cargo.toml file’s package.rust-version field.

This MSRV is for the default features. For other features, the nightly Rust toolchain is required.