[Rd] S4 packages and .Rdata file.

Witold Eryk Wolski wolski at molgen.mpg.de
Sun Jan 30 15:10:27 CET 2005


Dear developers.

Have spend just 1 h searching for a bug in a new version of a new 
version of a package.
I was getting a segfault all the time. "Funny" thing - there was no 
error neither in the S nor in the C code.

To solve the problem I had to delete the .Rdata file!

What I observed. If the .Rdata file was generated while a previous 
release of a package was installed  in the .Rdata file the S4 classes 
and methods definition are stored  for some reasons. It may be of course 
that I have sourced the method definition what would explain why they 
are in .Rdata.  More interestingly is that even if loading a new version 
of a package with library(msbase)
the function definitions stored in .Rdata precede the methods of the 
newly loaded package in the search path. They are called instead of the 
new method definitions (?).

So If I wass calling what I thought is the new version of the method the 
old method stored months ago in the .Rdata file was called again and again.

Is not there a better way to avoid such problems than deleting the 
.Rdata file?

Eryk


-- 
Dipl. bio-chem. Witold Eryk Wolski
MPI-Moleculare Genetic
Ihnestrasse 63-73 14195 Berlin
tel: 0049-30-83875219                 __("<    _
http://www.molgen.mpg.de/~wolski      \__/    'v'
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mail: witek96 at users.sourceforge.net    ^^     m m
      wolski at molgen.mpg.de



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