[Rd] Efficient development of NAMESPACEd packages.

[Vitalie Spinu]

Dear R-devel,

How are the package authors supposed to develop their own NAMESPACEd
packages efficiently? And what are the directions R is taking in order to
facilitate the development cycle?

This questions are in the context of the recent thread on ESS-help
(http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.ess.general/5528/focus=5575) which
triggered the development of new ess-developer mode. In lay words, when
ess-developer mode is on, the evaluation of the code chunks is
"redirected" into the namespace:pkg and package:pkg, i.e. functions,
classes and methods are assigned in package namespace and package
environment, in the spirit of insertSource and assignInNamespace.

How does the above approach fit with the direction R is taking, in the
light of recent restrictions on "assignInNamespace" and the fact that R
does not have an unlockEnvironmnet function to unlock the package
namespace? Particularly are there any plans to restrict the use of
"unlockBinding" and "assign" functions?

Thanks,
Vitalie.

PS:
>From the NEWS file:

• assignInNamespace() has further restrictions on use apart from at
top-level, as its help page has warned.  Expect it to be disabled from
programmatic use in the future.