[Rd] R CMD check: unstated dependence on a standard package.

Henrik Bengtsson hb at stat.berkeley.edu
Fri Sep 8 01:14:07 CEST 2006


In the recent R-devel version, I receive the following error:

* checking whether the package can be loaded with stated dependencies
... WARNING
Error in doTryCatch(return(expr), name, parentenv, handler) :
	could not find function "packageDescription"
Error in library(R.oo) : .First.lib failed for 'R.oo'
Execution halted

It looks like this package (or one of its dependent packages) has an
unstated dependence on a standard package.  All dependencies must be
declared in DESCRIPTION.
See the information on DESCRIPTION files in the chapter 'Creating R
packages' of the 'Writing R Extensions' manual.

I found the following comment in NEWS.R-2.5.0dev under "CHANGES IN R
VERSION 2.4.0" related to two packages only:

	- throws an error if the standard packages 'methods' and
          'stats4' are imported from and not declared in the
          DESCRIPTION file.

When I add 'utils' to "Depends:" in the DESCRIPTION file the error
goes away.  Could you please confirm that you from now on have to
specify also the 'utils' package and other standard package in
Depends?

Thanks

Henrik




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