On 27 August 2014 16:09, Dan Tenenbaum <dtene...@fhcrc.org> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Gavin Simpson" <ucfa...@gmail.com>
> > To: "Hadley Wickham" <h.wick...@gmail.com>
> > Cc: r-devel@r-project.org
> > Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2014 3:01:53 PM
> > Subject: Re: [Rd] Re R CMD check checking in development version of R
> >
> > On 27 August 2014 15:24, Hadley Wickham <h.wick...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > > Is that the cause of these NOTEs? Is the expectation that if I am
> > > > using a
> > > > function from a package, even a package that I have in Depends:,
> > > > that I
> > > > have to explicitly declare these imports in NAMESPACE?
> > >
> > > Yes.
>
> > > (And really you shouldn't have any packages in depends, they should
> > > all be in imports)
> >
> >
> > I disagree with *any*; having say vegan loaded when one is using
> > analogue
> > is a design decision as the latter borrows heavily from and builds
> > upon
> > vegan. In general I have moved packages that didn't need to be in
> > Depends
> > into Imports; in the version I am currently doing final tweaks on
> > before it
> > goes to CRAN I have remove all but vegan from Depends.
> >
> > Or am I thinking about this in the wrong way?
> >
>
> I've found that if yourpkg (which Depends on theirpkg but does not import
> it) has yourfunction() which calls some function in theirpkg, and if
> someone else writes a package which imports yourpkg and calls yourfunction,
> it will not work. Whereas if yourpkg imported theirpkg (in the NAMESPACE
> file), it would work. I've had to write to many package maintainers asking
> them to import things for this reason.
>
> So that in itself is a reason not to use Depends, or at least, to be sure
> that you import (in your NAMESPACE) whatever's in Depends (in addition to
> Imports).
>
> Dan
Dan,
I think we'll just have to differ on this point Dan. Why should I make it
somewhat more complicated for the people I anticipate using my package just
so that I make it easier for developers of other packages to *potentially*
write code using my packages. analogue and vegan have been around for a
long time, since before the required namespaces --- in vegan's case
possibly before there were namespaces in R (or at least before the were in
widespread use), so to change the standard behaviour of loading my package
and getting vegan too is not something I'm going to do lightly. Especially
as there are several papers out there with code written before the
compulsory namespace stuff came to R that assumed vegan was loaded because
thats what `library("analogue")` *did*.
I'm happy to work with developers on issues as they arrive of course. I
just don;t see why their envisioned future needs should trump the needs of
the user now.
If we take your and Hadley's reasoning to the extreme, not a single package
should use Depends in which case what purpose is there for Depends? Until R
Core remove Depends from DESCRIPTION and flag it under `R CMD check`-ing
people, including me, are going to continue using it if that is what they
think is best for their users.
Again, I am happy to be re-educated on this though :-)
Cheers,
G
>
> > Thanks again
> >
> > Gavin
> >
> >
> > >
> > > Hadley
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > http://had.co.nz/
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Gavin Simpson, PhD
> >
> > [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> >
>
--
Gavin Simpson, PhD
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