[Rd] Embedding R and registering routines

[Seth Falcon]

Simon Urbanek <simon.urbanek at r-project.org> writes:

> Duncan,
>
> are you going to take care of this? I have a quick solution for R- 
> devel that adds a special entry if requested.
>
> I'm not quite convinced that we need as much flexibility as adding  
> arbitrary DllInfos, because the embedding application is a really  
> special concept (everything else is dynamically loaded except for the  
> application). In a sense "base" does that for non-embedded R and the  
> distinction is that it doesn't allow dynamic lookup. I don't think  
> adding arbitrary DllInfos is wise, because we would have to expose  
> DLL handles etc. - do we really want to do that? And as for adding  
> NULL-handle DLLInfos, there is only one legitimate use and that is  
> the embedding application, so anything else looks more like abuse to  
> me... (just lazy solution to not have to determine the dll). Also the  
> embedded DllInfo cannot be unloaded by design, so it doesn't need  
> anything complicated...

Perhaps I'm not understanding the issues at hand, but I think there
are other use cases for a mechanism accessible to package developers
to dynamically register routines.  Just as R can load packages to make
new routines available, I don't see why an R package should not be
able to provide an analogous plugin mechanism of its own.

+ seth

-- 
Seth Falcon | Computational Biology | Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
http://bioconductor.org