[Rd] package 'stats' needs import directive for 1.9.0?

[Paul Gilbert]

Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

>On Fri, 27 Feb 2004, Swinton, Jonathan wrote:
>
>From: Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk>
>Subject: Re: [Rd] package 'stats' needs import directive for 1.9.0?
>To: "Heywood, Giles" <Giles.Heywood at CommerzbankIB.com>
>Cc: R-devel at stat.math.ethz.ch
>  
>
>>... 
>>    
>>
>>>I suggest you don't try: there are already quite a few 1.9.0-specific 
>>>versions of packages on CRAN, and 1.8.x will be history in a 
>>>couple of 
>>>months.
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>I'm not sure I understand the advice here. I have also hit the same problem,
>>and it seems reasonable to me to aspire to maintain a single package which
>>works on both 1.8.x and 1.9.x. 
>>    
>>
>
>It is not easily possible if namespaces are involved.  We failed to 
>anticpate that we would need version-dependent namespaces until rather 
>late and then decided not to set up an elaborate solution when most people 
>affected had already made separate versions for 1.9.0.
>  
>
I'm confused (not for the first time).  I can see that namespaces are an 
additional problem, but I thought the original question was about 
defining an S4 generic "start." This  would conflict (and override?) the 
S3 generic in base, which I don't think is allowed in 1.9.0. Until 
recently I have been overriding the start function in base (and some 
others) with my own S3 generic, and have just gone through a rather 
lengthy exercise to  rename these functions and some objects and other 
methods so that things do work in 1.9.0. (They do also work in 1.8.1.)

Will S3 and S4 generics for start co-exist? What happens to all the S3 
methods for start if the S4 generic is loaded? Won't this break a lot of 
code other than mine?

Paul Gilbert