Like chocolate and peanut butter, R and Callisto are two great tastes that taste great together!
You might think Callisto is a great tool for developing Python notebooks and you’d be right. But Callisto is an excellent tool for working R notebooks too! Here are some things you’ll need to know before diving into R with Callisto.
Where can I use R with Callisto?
You can run an R notebook just about anywhere that Callisto runs. Callisto can run R kernels on your Mac and on any Callisto Cloud server. The one exception is the iPad. Unfortunately, the iPad Callisto client can’t run R on the iPad itself at this time. But you can absolutely use your iPad client to use R on a powerful Callisto Cloud server.
How do I setup Callisto for R?
If you’re using a Callisto Cloud server, there’s no setup required. Go forth and R!
If you’re running on your Mac, there’s just a couple of quick steps. First, open the Callisto Preferences window by going the Callisto menu and choosing Preferences… or using the keyboard shortcut ⌘-, (command + comma). Go the the R Integration tab of the preferences window.
Step 1
If you don’t have R installed, you’ll see instructions on downloading and installing R on your Mac. If R is already installed on your Mac, you can go to Step 2.
To install R, click the first button to “Open the R Download Page”, which will take you to the R for macOS page on the R Project website. Follow the instructions to down and install R. Be sure to get the right R for your Mac. Unless you have a reason for a different version, newer Apple Silicon Macs (M1, M2, etc) users should download an Apple Silicon arm64 package.
At Callisto HQ, we know R users are very specific about their preferred version. Callisto should work fine with any version of R that can run on your Mac.
Once the installation is complete, you can click the “Yes! I’ve installed R on my Mac” button to go to Step 3.
Step 2
Great! You’ve already got R installed, so you’re almost ready. There’s just one quick step to connect R to Callisto. Click the “Connect Callisto to R” button to enable the connection.
Step 3
Callisto will take a few moments to connect to your R environment. Curious about the details? Callisto is installing the R kernel for Jupyter notebooks, which lets the R compute engine power Callisto’s hot rod notebooks.
Step 4
You’re all done. Let’s go data science!
