[Bioc-devel] Depending vs. Importing?

[Kasper Daniel Hansen]

On Jul 9, 2006, at 4:24 AM, Oleg Sklyar wrote:

> Without going to your particular example, the main difference as I see
> it, is that developers using import can still make the packages usable
> in case a dependency is broken.
>
> Suppose your package is intended for some complex analysis (for  
> which it
> does not need anything) and can additionally produce some fancy
> graphical output of the analysis if it loads a dependency. Now if this
> dependency is broken (missing, cannot be compiled etc) - with depends
> your package will fail to install; with import the package developer
> could have tested for the result and implemented some simple plots if
> the dependency is broken - but the package would still work for the
> analysis.
>
> If however, the package fails to work completely when it cannot import
> something, then such import should go into depends to allow for the
> error during the installation time.
>
> Generally, you do not want to make a package totally non-functional  
> if 1
> of 10 dependencies fails, therefore it is reasonable to use import for
> lesser important features of the package.

But isn't this what the suggests field is for?

/Kasper


> Cheers,
>   Oleg
>
> Byron Ellis wrote:
>> Is there any particular reason Imports and different from
>> Dependencies? I may be missing something, but importing would seem to
>> imply a dependence relationship which doesn't appear to be honored.
>> rflowcyt (not to pick on it, it just happened to be the package I
>> tried to load) for example imports but does not depend on prada.
>>
>> ---
>> Byron Ellis (ellis at stat.harvard.edu)
>> "Oook" -- The Librarian
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Bioc-devel at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/bioc-devel
>
> -- 
> Dr. Oleg Sklyar
> European Bioinformatics Institute
> Wellcome Trust Genome Campus
> Hinxton
> Cambridge CB10 1SD
> England
>
> Tel   +44-1223-494466
> Fax   +44-1223-494468
> email osklyar at ebi.ac.uk
>
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