[Rd] Wishlist: 'quietly' argument for .onAttach() / .First.lib()

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Thu, 13 Apr 2006, Peter Ruckdeschel wrote:

> Hi R-devels,
>
> in "Writing R extensions" as well as in the help
> to .onAttach(), you mention that one could
> use this function to issue a start-up message/banner
> for the package.
>
> My little wish for Easter:
>
> a 'quietly'-type argument for .onAttach() / .First.lib()
> which is passed through by functions
> require() and library() respectively,
> and by means of which one could optionally
> suppress this start-up message/banner .
>
> Is this hard to do?

I believe so (and think we have been here before).  The documented call 
sequence is

      .onLoad(libname, pkgname)
      .onAttach(libname, pkgname)

the same as .First.lib.  There is no way to add an argument here, as many 
existing packages do not support it.  Beyond that, how would you pass the 
argument in?  Namespaces and packages are often loaded/attached implicitly 
as a result of loading other packages.

I did think you could make use of an option to decide whether to the print 
the message or not, but I have always assumed that those who did want a 
banner probably did not want it suppressed.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595