[Rd] Silently loading and Depends: versus NAMESPACE imports

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 12 January 2012 at 12:12, Hervé Pagès wrote:
| Hi Dirk,
| 
| On 01/11/2012 11:42 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
| >
| > R CMD check really hates it when my .onLoad() function contains
| >      suppressMessages(library(foo))
| 
| Note that you can always fool 'R CMD check' by doing something like:
| 
|      sillyname <- library
|      suppressMessages(sillyname("foo"))
| 
| Also isn't suppressPackageStartupMessages() more appropriate?
| 
| >
| > However, _and for non-public packages not going to CRAN_ I prefer doing this
| > over using explicit Depends or import statements in the NAMESPACE file as the
| > latter do not give me an ability to make the loading less verbose.  With the
| > R universe of packages being as vast as at is, a simple (non-public) package
| > I have loads about five or six other packages explicitly, each of which loads
| > even more.  The net result is totally intimidating _sixty lines full_ of
| > verbose noise that is meaningful to me as an R programmer, but not for the
| > colleagues expected to use the packages. It looks rather uninviting, frankly.
| >
| > How do I use imports via NAMESPACE, and yet keep the noise level down to zero?
| 
| If you only need to import foo (i.e. and actually don't need to attach
| it to the search path) then putting foo in Imports and using import
| statements in NAMESPACE will keep the noise level down to zero.

I don't think so.  

I have an internal package, call it fooUtils, that (among other things) needs
to figure at startup whether it runs on this or that OS.  

So that package fooUtils does

    .onLoad <- function(libname, pkgname) {
    
        if (.Platform$OS.type == "windows") {
            packageStartupMessage("Running on Windows")
    	# [... more stuff here ... ]
        } else if (.Platform$OS.type == "unix") {
            packageStartupMessage("Running on Linux")
    	# [... more stuff here ... ]
        } else {
            warning("Platform ", .Platform$OS.type, " not recognised")
            drives <- NULL
        }
    
        # ....
    
    }


and contrary to your claim, this is not silent as soon as I do


   importFrom(fooUtils, someThing)


the messages above pop up. While I can suppress them for 'normal' loads via

   suppressMessages(library(fooUtils))

or

   suppressPackageStartupMessages(library(fooUtils))


I cannot suppress them via NAMESPACE imports.  

Dirk
 
| So I guess your question is: how do we suppress package startup messages
| for packages listed in Depends?
| 
| Cheers,
| H.
| 
| >
| > Dirk
| >
| 
| 
| -- 
| Hervé Pagès
| 
| Program in Computational Biology
| Division of Public Health Sciences
| Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
| 1100 Fairview Ave. N, M1-B514
| P.O. Box 19024
| Seattle, WA 98109-1024
| 
| E-mail: hpages at fhcrc.org
| Phone:  (206) 667-5791
| Fax:    (206) 667-1319

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