Dear R-devel community, I'm exploring (experimentally) the integration of the Rust toolchain into Rtools, to enable smoother development and shipping of Rust-based R packages on Windows.
I've written a detailed blog post documenting the process, technical rationale and what’s next: https://medium.com/@sunwjie/integrating-the-rust-toolchain-into-rtools-e4c7df40cb82. Currently, Rust is not included in Rtools, and setting it up alongside R on Windows can be confusing for some users, especially those unfamiliar with computers. However, both Rust (via the -gnu toolchain) and Rtools share the same MinGW-based toolchain, making integration technically feasible. What I’ve done so far - Built a custom Rtools45 installer with Rust 1.85.0 integrated alongside GCC and other tools. - Successfully tested Rust-based R packages like {string2path} using the custom Rtools. I'd love to contribute this work upstream and collaborate with Rtools maintainers to make Rust a supported part of the official Rtools release. Are there existing plans or blockers around this? Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your thoughts! Best regards, Wenjie —— https://www.sun-wenjie.site ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
