NEWS

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ast2ast 1.1

• New function ‘make_package(files, entry_points, package_dir)': translates R files into the C++ code of an existing package, like 'Rcpp::compileAttributes'. Only 'entry_points' are exported; all other functions in the files are internal helpers. Runtime errors name package, file, line and function ('In ’mypkg: helpers.R:5 (helper): ...'').
• New functional 'pmap(f, ncores, x, ...)': like 'map', but the elements are processed in parallel on a thread pool (via RcppThread). Warnings raised inside 'f' are reported in element order; errors report the line inside 'f'. Functions that use the R API internally (currently 'lbfgsb') cannot be called inside 'pmap' and are rejected at translation time.
• ‘pso' uses its own Mersenne-Twister RNG instead of R’s RNG and takes a new ‘seed' argument: 'pso(f, lower, upper, ngen, npop, error_threshold, global, seed[, data])'. Results are reproducible and independent of R’s RNG state; 'pso' can also be called inside 'pmap'.
• Faster subsetting and subset assignment; common subsetting patterns now run faster than in base R.
• 'jacobian' takes an optional 'colouring' argument (forward mode): columns that share no row are computed in one sweep. 'colouring = "static", n = literal' derives the sparsity pattern at translation time; 'colouring = "runtime"' records it at every call from one reverse-mode run of 'f'.
• RcppThread is a new dependency (Imports and LinkingTo).
• Borrowed arguments ('borrow_vec', 'borrow_mat', 'borrow_array') can now be combined with forward-mode differentiation for inner functions and for 'output = "XPtr"'.

ast2ast 1.0 (2026-09-14)

• Major release, and the first since the package was archived on CRAN. A great deal has changed; ast2ast is substantially more capable than version 0.3. Highlights follow.
• New tree-based type system with type inference, 'const' checking, user-defined types ('new_type' / 'slots') and functions as types ('fn', including inner functions and recursion).
• Automatic differentiation: forward mode and reverse (tape-based) mode.
• Root finding and optimization: uniroot, L-BFGS-B and nnls.
• Support for n-dimensional arrays and for collection types.
• Functional helpers: apply, map, Reduce, Filter.
• Runtime errors now report the originating R source line.
• A much larger set of supported base R functions and operators; see the vignettes for the current list.

ast2ast 0.30

• removed bug in cmr.
• refactored the conversion of sexp to SEXP

ast2ast 0.2.1 (2022-10-19)

• all functions in C++ are now inlined

ast2ast 0.2 (2022-09-15)

• code can now be translated to R function and external pointer