If a user downloads Spark source, of course he needs to build it before running it. But a user can download pre-built Spark binary distributions, then he can directly use sparkR after deployment of the Spark cluster.
From: Hossein [mailto:fal...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, September 25, 2015 2:37 AM To: Sun, Rui Cc: shiva...@eecs.berkeley.edu; dev@spark.apache.org Subject: Re: SparkR package path Requiring users to download entire Spark distribution to connect to a remote cluster (which is already running Spark) seems an over kill. Even for most spark users who download Spark source, it is very unintuitive that they need to run a script named "install-dev.sh" before they can run SparkR. --Hossein On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 7:28 PM, Sun, Rui <rui....@intel.com<mailto:rui....@intel.com>> wrote: SparkR package is not a standalone R package, as it is actually R API of Spark and needs to co-operate with a matching version of Spark, so exposing it in CRAN does not ease use of R users as they need to download matching Spark distribution, unless we expose a bundled SparkR package to CRAN (packageing with Spark), is this desirable? Actually, for normal users who are not developers, they are not required to download Spark source, build and install SparkR package. They just need to download a Spark distribution, and then use SparkR. For using SparkR in Rstudio, there is a documentation at https://github.com/apache/spark/tree/master/R From: Hossein [mailto:fal...@gmail.com<mailto:fal...@gmail.com>] Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2015 1:42 AM To: shiva...@eecs.berkeley.edu<mailto:shiva...@eecs.berkeley.edu> Cc: Sun, Rui; dev@spark.apache.org<mailto:dev@spark.apache.org> Subject: Re: SparkR package path Yes, I think exposing SparkR in CRAN can significantly expand the reach of both SparkR and Spark itself to a larger community of data scientists (and statisticians). I have been getting questions on how to use SparkR in RStudio. Most of these folks have a Spark Cluster and wish to talk to it from RStudio. While that is a bigger task, for now, first step could be not requiring them to download Spark source and run a script that is named install-dev.sh. I filed SPARK-10776 to track this. --Hossein On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 7:21 PM, Shivaram Venkataraman <shiva...@eecs.berkeley.edu<mailto:shiva...@eecs.berkeley.edu>> wrote: As Rui says it would be good to understand the use case we want to support (supporting CRAN installs could be one for example). I don't think it should be very hard to do as the RBackend itself doesn't use the R source files. The RRDD does use it and the value comes from https://github.com/apache/spark/blob/master/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/api/r/RUtils.scala#L29 AFAIK -- So we could introduce a new config flag that can be used for this new mode. Thanks Shivaram On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 8:15 PM, Sun, Rui <rui....@intel.com<mailto:rui....@intel.com>> wrote: > Hossein, > > > > Any strong reason to download and install SparkR source package separately > from the Spark distribution? > > An R user can simply download the spark distribution, which contains SparkR > source and binary package, and directly use sparkR. No need to install > SparkR package at all. > > > > From: Hossein [mailto:fal...@gmail.com<mailto:fal...@gmail.com>] > Sent: Tuesday, September 22, 2015 9:19 AM > To: dev@spark.apache.org<mailto:dev@spark.apache.org> > Subject: SparkR package path > > > > Hi dev list, > > > > SparkR backend assumes SparkR source files are located under > "SPARK_HOME/R/lib/." This directory is created by running R/install-dev.sh. > This setting makes sense for Spark developers, but if an R user downloads > and installs SparkR source package, the source files are going to be in > placed different locations. > > > > In the R runtime it is easy to find location of package files using > path.package("SparkR"). But we need to make some changes to R backend and/or > spark-submit so that, JVM process learns the location of worker.R and > daemon.R and shell.R from the R runtime. > > > > Do you think this change is feasible? > > > > Thanks, > > --Hossein