Flight RPC functionality in R package without python dependency

[vh-d]

Are there any technical reasons why Arrow Flight functionality in the R package is implemented in Python via the reticulate package? Or is it this way purely to speed up the development?

I am asking because we are now evaluating if Arrow Flight could be used as a universal connector between R and other languages (namely C#) and depending on Python and reticulate would be a significant drawback.

[amoeba]

Hi @vh-d, I don't think there's a technical reason and I think you're right that it was purely a way to provide the functionality to R without writing a first-class R implementation. There's an existing issue for this at #31115.

Short of contributing a first-class R implementation yourself, you might have a look an emerging spec for sending Arrow data over HTTP which has a lower barrier to entry while still providing great performance: https://github.com/apache/arrow-experiments/tree/main/http. There are examples in C#, R, and other languages.

[vh-d]

Many thanks for the prompt reply. I will have a look and try to estimate what it takes to implement the R flight client and server in R. I would expect it is mostly wrapping the c++ library but seeing the comment in #31115, I guess it may be a bit more complicated than that.

I will give the new http client/server approach a look too.