[Rd] The Depends: field of a package is now used by library()

Deepayan Sarkar deepayan at stat.wisc.edu
Thu Aug 12 16:42:20 CEST 2004


On Thursday 12 August 2004 07:34, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> In R-devel, the Depends: field in the DESCRIPTION file is now used by
> library() to load the named packages before the current package, and
> also to set up the environment to save images and prepare for lazy
> loading.

How would this relate to namespaces? For instance, lattice imports grid 
(and a few things from stats and graphics). If I keep grid in the 
depends field, loading lattice does a require(grid), which defeats one 
of the purposes of having namespaces. If I leave it out, nothing bad 
seems to happen as long as grid is installed, but there should be some 
indication in the DESCRIPTION that that grid is a requirement. None of 
the other fields seem appropriate.

Deepayan



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