On 13-08-28 12:29 PM, Marc Schwartz wrote:

On Aug 28, 2013, at 11:15 AM, Paul Gilbert <pgilbert...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have a package (TSdbi) which provides end user functions that I export, and 
several utilities for plugin packages (e.g. TSMySQL) that I do not export 
because I do not intend them to be exposed to end users. I call these from the 
plugin packages using TSdbi:::  but that now produces a note in the checks:

* checking dependencies in R code ... NOTE
Namespace imported from by a ‘:::’ call: ‘TSdbi’
  See the note in ?`:::` about the use of this operator. :: should be
  used rather than ::: if the function is exported, and a package
  almost never needs to use ::: for its own functions.

Is there a preferred method to accomplish this in a way that does not produce a 
note?

Thanks,
Paul



Paul,

See this rather lengthy discussion that occurred within the past week:

   https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2013-August/067180.html

Regards,

Marc Schwartz

I did follow the recent discussion, but no one answered the question "Is there a preferred method to accomplish this?" (I suppose the answer is that there is no other way, given that no one actually suggested anything else.) Most of the on topic discussion in that thread was about how to subvert the CRAN checks, which is not what I am trying to do and was also pointed out as a bad idea by Duncan. The substantive response was

>r63654 has fixed this particular issue, and R-devel will no longer
>warn against the use of ::: on packages of the same maintainer.
>
>Regards,
>Yihui

but that strikes me as a temporary work around rather than a real solution: suppose plugins are provided by a package from another maintainer.

Since CRAN notes have a habit of becoming warnings and then errors, it seems useful to identify the preferred legitimate approach while this is still a note. That would save work for both package developers and CRAN maintainers.

My thinking is that there is a need for a NAMESPACE directive something like limitedExport() that allows ::: for identified functions without provoking a CRAN complaint when packages use those functions. But there may already be a better way I don't know about. Or perhaps the solution is to split the end user functions and the utilities for plugin packages into two separate packages?

Paul

______________________________________________
R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

Reply via email to