[R] provide() deprecated -- what's the substitute?

[Martin Maechler]

I know I should probably know the answer,
but I've forgotten, and  ?provide only gives me the Deprecation page,
not the *reason* for deprecation and the substitute to use..

>>>>> "BDR" == Prof Brian D Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> writes:

    BDR> On Thu, 10 Aug 2000, Kenneth Cabrera wrote:
    >> Hello, R-users!
    >> 
    >> When I load the sgeostat library I obtain some warnings messages.
    >> 
    >> >library(sgeostat)
    >> 
    >> What kind of problem will I expect to have with these messages?
    >> 
    >> Loading required package: mva
    >> Loading required package: tripack
    >> Warning messages:
    >> 1: `provide' is deprecated.
    >> See ?Deprecated. in: .Deprecated()
    >> 2: `provide' is deprecated.
    >> See ?Deprecated. in: .Deprecated()
    >> 

    BDR> Probably none. The purpose of provide() was to allow one package
    BDR> to subsume or masquerade as another.  It seems only to have been
    BDR> used incorrectly for a package to provide itself, which just
    BDR> slowed down searches.

And what about the cases where it *was* used correctly?
If I have an experimental version of a package "foo" and name it "fooExp",
and then do
     library(fooExp)
and
     provide("foo")
(or have this in  fooExp's  zzz.R)

I subsequently want that any code that has 
   require(foo)
does NOT load the non-experimental foo,
but uses the experimental  fooExp.

How would I accomplish this easily, once  provide() [& .Provided ] are
gone ?

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