[R] lme4 package and importIntoEnv errors

[Douglas Bates]

Deepayan Sarkar wrote:
> On Monday 23 May 2005 09:48 pm, Patrick Connolly wrote:
> 
>>I've used packages for some years now and seldom had any trouble using
>>the tgz files.  Now I've come across something I've never seen before.
>>
>>
>>>version
>>
>>         _
>>platform i686-pc-linux-gnu
>>arch     i686
>>os       linux-gnu
>>system   i686, linux-gnu
>>status
>>major    2
>>minor    1.0
>>year     2005
>>month    04
>>day      18
>>language R
>>
>>
>>>library(lme4)
>>
>>Loading required package: methods
>>Loading required package: Matrix
>>Loading required package: latticeExtra
>>Error in importIntoEnv(impenv, impnames, ns, impvars) :
>>        objects ï¿½ï¿½coefï¿½ï¿½, ï¿½ï¿½coef<-ï¿½ï¿½, ï¿½ï¿½corMatrixï¿½ï¿½, ï¿½ï¿½matrix<-ï¿½ï¿½,
>>ï¿½ï¿½pdFactorï¿½ï¿½, ï¿½ï¿½pdMatrixï¿½ï¿½ are not exported by 'namespace:Matrix' Error:
>>package/namespace load failed for 'lme4'
>>
>>The Matrix and latticeExtra were downloaded and installed yesterday and
>>the methods is what came with R-2.1.0.
> 
> 
> lme4 is extremely sensitive to the version of Matrix. It's not clear from your 
> mail whether you have updated your lme4 after updating Matrix, but if you 
> haven't, that is almost certainly the problem.

Thanks Deepayan.  I was about to write the same thing.

Perhaps I can add a bit more explanation.  As Deepayan mentioned, the
versions of the lme4 package are closely linked to the versions of the
Matrix package.  The R code for lmer is in the lme4 package but the
corresponding C code is in the Matrix package where it can gain access
to other C functions for sparse matrix manipulation.

When we create a release of the lme4 package we can specify the earliest
version of the Matrix package that will work with it.  However, unless
we become psychic or gain access to a time machine, we can't specify the
last version of Matrix that will work with this version of lme4.  What
you are seeing is an older version of lme4 looking for exported
functions that have been removed from a later version of the Matrix package.

There are several possible ways to resolve this difficulty but all of
them are undesirable to some extent.  For the time being we will just
recommend that you install the latest versions of lme4 and Matrix
simultaneously.