[Bioc-devel] Request to add 'normalize' to BiocGenerics

[Hervé Pagès]

On 02/20/2013 01:02 PM, Hervé Pagès wrote:
...
> Furthermore, the good citizens that modify their package to use the
> normalize() in BiocGenerics will be in a situation worth than before
> because, from an end user point of view, their normalize() function
> (which is now a method attached to BiocGenerics::normalize) won't
> seem to work anymore, even if their package was loaded last, just
> because one bad citizen was loaded before (unless the end user calls
> BiocGenerics::normalize()). That would be unfair.
> So if I was the maintainer of one of those packages, I wouldn't see
> any benefit of making that move, all the contrary, unless everybody
> else also makes it.

Oops, I'm taking this whole paragraph back. I did some testing and it
seems that the "normalize" method (defined in package A) would actually
be found, even if its generic is masked by package B, as long as package
A is before package B in the search path.

H.