RFC: Loading packages at startup

[ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk]

On Thu, 24 Oct 2002, David James wrote:

> I think the proposed changes will be useful. A couple of points
> (mostly for simplicity):
>
> Prof Brian D Ripley wrote:
> > ...
> >
> > 3) It would be useful to allow the library tree to be specified, as a
> >    second field on the line.
>
> Other than convenience (nothing wrong with that, of course) I don't
> see too much need for this.  The .Renviron files may already have defined
> R_LIBS, so the library tree may already be specified.

It's important if one wants to save the list to know which library list
was in use at the time. R_LIBS is subject to change.

> > 5) We might want to allow a .Rpackages file to override Rpackages.site
> >    (or we might not).  One idea is to allow a minus sign in front of a
> >    package name, and to merge the Rpackages.site and .Rpackages files
> >    before loading any packages.  If we did this we probably need to be
> >    able to save the list of packages to be loaded (and can't easily save
> >    those not to be loaded), so perhaps -- as the first list of .Rpackages
> >    should empty the list.
>
> Why not using arguments to R, say, --no-site-Rpackages and --no-Rpackages,
> similar to --no-environ, --no-site-file, --no-init-file, and friends?
> Adding specialized syntax with the minus sign seems a bit kludgy.

We would do that anyway.  The case I am thinking about is where
Rpackages.site includes a lot of packages, and for this project I want to
exclude just one.  Then a .Rpackages with `-foo' does the trick.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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