[Bioc-devel] any interest in a BiocMatrix core package?

[Michael Lawrence]

I'm pretty sure we're also considering generics for functions that do not
exist in base R. Like rowVars() and colVars(). This sort of suggests that
matrixStats should be part of base R.

As an aside, we should think about the signature on those implicit
generics. Should they really include na.rm and dims? The simpler the
signature, the easier to understand the API.


On Thu, Nov 2, 2017 at 10:38 AM, Martin Maechler <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch
> wrote:

> >>>>> Martin Morgan <martin.morgan at roswellpark.org>
> >>>>>     on Thu, 2 Nov 2017 06:17:19 -0400 writes:
>
>     > On 11/02/2017 05:00 AM, Martin Maechler wrote:
>     >>>>>>> "ML" == Michael Lawrence <lawrence.michael at gene.com>
>     >>>>>>> on Wed, 1 Nov 2017 14:13:54 -0700 writes:
>     >>
>     >> > Probably way easier to add the generics to the Matrix >
>     >> package and everyone just depends on that.
>     >>
>     >> Yes!  It is 'Recommended' and comes with every R
>     >> installation, and has had many such matrix S4 methods in
>     >> place for > 10 years, notably for dealing with (large)
>     >> sparse matrices.
>     >>
>     >> Honestly, I (as co-maintainer of Matrix, principal
>     >> maintainer for several years now) had been a bit
>     >> surprised and frustrated that the 'matrixStats'
>     >> initiative had started w/o any contact with the Matrix
>     >> package maintainers and initially has not ever tried to
>     >> use Matrix package classes or functionality (and this is
>     >> still the case now AFAICS).
>     >>
>     >> I'm happy to coordinate with maintainers of bioc packages
>     >> about which generics (and classes !) to use and export,
>     >> etc.
>
>     > One issue is that Matrix is a relatively large package
>     > (well, I wonder if that's a reasonable statement, given
>     > the Bioc dependencies and data involved, but perhaps in
>     > general...) and hence 'overkill' to obtain a collection of
>     > generics. Is there any prospect for factoring out the
>     > definition of the generics from implementation of the
>     > methods?  Re-purposing stats4 ?
>
>     > Martin Morgan
>
> Hmm..  we have quite a few  setGenericImplicit()  statements in
> the methods package already, notably for  'colSums' and friends,
> and so other decent citizen packages do *NOT*  setGeneric() at
> all on these ... and of course, Matrix _is_ a decent citizen in
> the R package universe.
>
> Instead of to stats4, I'm pretty sure we should only consider
> what functions should be added to the implicit generics already
> provided by the 'methods' package itself.
>
> Could it be that (some of) you are not properly aware of
> implicit generics?
>
> If you start 'R --vanilla' you can say
>
> > implicitGeneric("colSums")
> standardGeneric for "colSums" defined from package "base"
>
> function (x, na.rm = FALSE, dims = 1, ...)
> standardGeneric("colSums")
> <bytecode: 0x6cb4798>
> <environment: 0x6cab560>
> Methods may be defined for arguments: x, na.rm, dims
> Use  showMethods("colSums")  for currently available ones.
> ---------
>
> so I think it is clear how *any* decent package has to define
> methods for colSums(), and if they do, there should not be any conflicts.
>
> I think the problem is with S3 methods, not with S4 ones, where
> the implicit generics I understand where made for dealing with
> several packages writing methods for the same generic without
> one of the packages taking precedence.
>
> Martin Mächler
>
>
>
>     >>
>     >> Best, Martin Maechler ETH Zurich (and R core team)
>     >>
>     >>
>     >>
>     >> > On Wed, Nov 1, 2017 at 1:59 PM, Hervé Pagès >
>     >> <hpages at fredhutch.org> wrote:
>     >>
>     >> >> That's probably a good idea but a clean solution would
>     >> >> need to involve all players, including the Matrix >>
>     >> package. Right now there are conflicts for some S4 >>
>     >> generics defined in Matrix and in BiocGenerics >>
>     >> (e.g. rowSums). I'm not sure that moving rowSums from >>
>     >> BiocGenerics to a new MatrixGenerics package would >>
>     >> address this.  Unless MatrixGenerics is on CRAN and >>
>     >> Matrix depends on it ;-)
>     >> >>
>     >> >> How likely is this to happen?
>     >> >>
>     >> >> H.
>     >> >>
>     >> >>
>     >> [............]
>     >>
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>     >>
>
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