This is still experimental and unreliable. Your code should be safe, since IPython handles saving and loading notebooks in another process, but you'll lose all your variables if it crashes.

##Installing

You'll need zmq development headers to compile rzmq, as well curl headers for R devtools. On a recent Ubuntu/Debian installation, you can get these with:

sudo apt-get install libzmq3-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev

or with homebrew:

brew install zmq
# or upgrade
brew update
brew upgrade zmq

If using MacPorts on OS X, make sure an X server is intalled, open a terminal and do the following:

• sudo port install zmq

• Direct the compiler to use MacPorts libraries using

   export CPATH=/opt/local/include
   export LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/local/lib
  

• Start R in the same terminal, and proceed as below:

We need development versions of several packages from Github for now, due to recent fixes. First, you need to make sure you have the devtools R package available. If you don't, at the R console type:

install.packages("devtools")

Then, you can install the necessary development dependencies with:

# Need RCurl for install_github
install.packages('RCurl')
library(devtools)
install_github('armstrtw/rzmq')
install_github("takluyver/IRdisplay")
install_github("takluyver/IRkernel")

# Only if you have IPython 3 or above installed:
IRkernel::installspec()

You'll also need IPython. If you already have a Python environment set up, install IPython using your preferred tools. If not, installing Anaconda is the quickest way to get everything you need.

If you have IPython 3 installed, you can create a notebook and switch to IRkernel from the dropdown menu. In IPython 2.x, you will need to start the notebook with this command:

ipython notebook --KernelManager.kernel_cmd="['R', '-e', 'IRkernel::main()', '--args', '{connection_file}']"

You can also substitute 'qtconsole' or 'console' for 'notebook' in this command.