[Bioc-devel] issue about S4 slot has a dist object.

[Martin Morgan]

On 04/01/2015 03:52 PM, Hervé Pagès wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In the same way that we avoid having 2 packages define the same
> S4 generic function by moving the shared generic definitions to
> BiocGenerics, it seems that we should also avoid having 2 packages
> call setOldClass on the same S3 class. Like with S4 generic functions,
> we've already started to do this by putting some setOldClass
> statements in BiocGenerics (e.g. we've done it for the 'connection'
> classes 'file', 'url', 'gzfile', 'bzfile', etc..., see class?gzfile).
> So if nobody objects we'll do this for the 'dist' class too.
>
> Then you won't need to use setOldClass in your cogena package Zhilong.
> You'll just need to make sure that you import BiocGenerics.

This sounds like an ok work-around to me.

For the hard-core...

One thing is that this is not seen when the package is loaded by itself, e.g.,

 > biocLite("zhilongjia/cogena")
 > library(cogena)
 >

only when loaded by BiocCheck (on the source directory)

 > BiocCheck::BiocCheck("cogena")
* This is BiocCheck, version 1.3.13.
* BiocCheck is a work in progress. Output and severity of issues may
   change.
* Installing package...
Note: the specification for S3 class "dist" in package 'cogena' seems equivalent 
to one from package 'graph': not turning on duplicate class definitions for this 
class.
^C

This is because BiocCheck (indirectly?) Imports: graph. But the old class 
definition seems to 'leak' (even though graph is not on the search path, and the 
dist old class is not exported from graph, and BiocCheck doesn't import the 
non-exported dist class, and cogena doesn't Depend or Import graph!)

Also of interest perhaps is that the Note is only printed when warn=1 (which 
BiocCheck also uses)

(new R session)

 > requireNamespace("graph")
Loading required namespace: graph
 > requireNamespace("cogena")
Loading required namespace: cogena
 > q()

(new R session:)

 > options(warn=1)
 > requireNamespace("graph")
Loading required namespace: graph
 > requireNamespace("cogena")
Loading required namespace: cogena
Note: the specification for S3 class "dist" in package 'cogena' seems equivalent 
to one from package 'graph': not turning on duplicate class definitions for this 
class.
 >


>
> Cheers,
> H.
>
>
> On 04/01/2015 03:28 PM, Michael Lawrence wrote:
>> Using setOldClass is generally fine. In this case, the graph package is
>> already defining the dist class, so you could just import that. The graph
>> package might have to export it though.
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 1, 2015 at 3:15 PM, Zhilong Jia <zhilongjia at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Here is the package. (https://tracker.bioconductor.org/issue1204 or
>>> https://github.com/zhilongjia/cogena; ). When I biocCheck it, there is a
>>> note.
>>>
>>> Note: the specification for S3 class “dist” in package ‘cogena’ seems
>>> equivalent to one from package ‘graph’: not turning on duplicate class
>>> definitions for this class.
>>>
>>>
>>> In the source code, there are two R files are related with this issue,
>>> cogena_class.R
>>> and  <https://github.com/zhilongjia/cogena/blob/master/R/cogena_class.R>
>>> dist_class.R
>>> <https://github.com/zhilongjia/cogena/blob/master/R/dist_class.R> in the R
>>> dir. Here there is a dist slot in cogena class. In the dist_class.R
>>> <https://github.com/zhilongjia/cogena/blob/master/R/dist_class.R>, I use
>>> setOldClass, but it seems it is not recommended by Bioconductor.
>>>
>>> How to repair this issue? Thank you.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Zhilong
>>> <https://github.com/zhilongjia/cogena/blob/master/R/cogena_class.R>
>>>
>>>          [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>>
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>>> Bioc-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/bioc-devel
>>>
>>
>>     [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>
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>>
>


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