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Extended Installation Guide

No one knows everything — and you don’t need to! Many of our users are not computer scientists, so some of the installation steps and technical terms may feel unfamiliar at first. That’s completely normal.

This guide is written to walk you through the process step by step, with explanations along the way. And remember: search engines (like DuckDuckGo) and chatbots (like ChatGPT) can be helpful allies if you ever get stuck or encounter a new concept.

If you run into issues that aren’t covered here, please reach out to us at: rtext.contact@gmail.com, so that we can improve the instructions for everyone.

To get started, follow these steps:

1) Install R and RStudio
Use the links below to download and install:
- R (version 4.0.0 or higher)
- RStudio (recommended)

2) Install and set up the text package
The text package gives you access to HuggingFace Transformers through reticulate (enabling advanced language analysis), which connects R to Python (while remaining in an R environment). It uses Python packages like torch and transformers.

To make this easy, run:
- textrpp_install() – installs a ready-to-use Python/Conda environment
- textrpp_initialize() – activates the environment for use in R

This setup will handle most Python and system dependencies automatically – however, you may be isntructed to install system level dependencis as further described below.

library(text)
library(reticulate)

# Install text-required Python packages in a Conda environment
text::textrpp_install()

# Show available Conda environments
reticulate::conda_list()

# Initialize the installed Conda environment
text::textrpp_initialize(save_profile = TRUE)

# Test that textEmbed works
textEmbed("hello")

# Run this in your Terminal (not in R)
conda config --add channels conda-forge
conda config --set channel_priority strict
conda config --remove channels defaults

# Run this in your Terminal (not in R)
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

# Run this in your Terminal (not in R)
brew install libomp

# Run this in your Terminal (not in R)
sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential libomp-dev

install.packages("dplyr")

library(reticulate)
reticulate::install_miniconda()

text::textrpp_initialize(
  condaenv = "textrpp_condaenv",
  refresh_settings = TRUE,
  save_profile = TRUE,
) 

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("oscarkjell/text")

library(text)
text::textrpp_install(
  update_conda = TRUE,
  force_conda = TRUE
)

library(text)
log <- text::textDiagnostics()
log 

# Create a virtual environment with text required python packages.
# Note that you have to provide a python path.
text::textrpp_install_virtualenv(rpp_version = c("torch==1.7.1", "transformers==4.12.5", "numpy", "nltk"),
                                 python_path = "/usr/local/bin/python3.9",
                                 envname = "textrpp_virtualenv")

# Initialize the virtual environment.
text::textrpp_initialize(virtualenv = "textrpp_virtualenv",
                         condaenv = NULL,
                         save_profile = TRUE)

Sys.setenv(OMP_NUM_THREADS = "1")
Sys.setenv(OMP_MAX_ACTIVE_LEVELS = "1")
Sys.setenv(KMP_DUPLICATE_LIB_OK = "TRUE")

Sys.setenv(TEXT_SKIP_OMP_PATCH = "TRUE")
library(text)

These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.