# Suggestion for an R interactor

**URL:** <https://discourse.slicer.org/t/suggestion-for-an-r-interactor/21572>\
**Category:** Development\
**Created:** [January 22, 2022, 1:53pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/suggestion-for-an-r-interactor/21572 "2022-01-22T13:53:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

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**Author:** ![jamesobutler](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/jamesobutler/32/7511_2.png) [@jamesobutler](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/jamesobutler)\
**Post date:** [January 22, 2022, 2:35pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/suggestion-for-an-r-interactor/21572/2 "2022-01-22T14:35:40Z")

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@muratmaga is more knowledgeable on this idea of going between Python and R options, but I think you will have to rely on installing python packages that call R packages where you’re still using a python 3 interactor instead of an R interactor.

Starting from this post linked below in a really old thread you can read some about why development of R within Slicer is likely not going to be implemented. It’s about most R packages having a GPL license instead of LGPL and Slicer is not wanting to distribute any GPL code in Slicer packages or extensions.

> [@Rpy2 pip installation fails](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/rpy2-pip-installation-fails/4883/7):
>
> Thanks @jamesobutler. There are many different types of analyses that one can use landmark based shape analyses to investigate different biological questions (phylogenetics, ecology, evolutionary trajectories etc). Most of these are already implemented in R as different packages (and surprisingly almost none in python, AFAIK). We just don’t want to reimplement them in Slicer (and also take the responsibility of maintaining them). Instead our goal is to have a standard way of visualizing results…

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