Renjin

Renjin's roots lie in an abortive 2010 attempt to compile the GNU R interpreter for the JVM via nestedvm,^[1] a toolchain which involves cross-compiling C and Fortran code to a static MIPS binary, which nestedvm can then translate to JVM bytecode. This proved challenging as GNU R had grown to rely heavily on dynamic linking and the best C standard library implementation available at the time for the MIPS architecture, Newlib, was not fully compatible with the GNU C Library, against which GNU R had been developed.

The experience with the R4JVM project provided the BeDataDriven team with in depth look at the GNU R codebase, and convinced them that a new implementation, written in Java, was a feasible undertaking. Development on Renjin began in October 2010, and rapidly resulted in a functional, if minimal, interpreter for the R language.

• Official website