[Rd] Best way to implement optional functions?

[Richard Cotton]

On 22 October 2015 at 22:55, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm planning on adding some new WebGL functionality to the rgl package, but
> it will pull in a very large number of dependencies. Since many people won't
> need it, I'd like to make the new parts optional.

> Can people suggest other packages that solve this kind of problem in a good
> way?

I had the same issue with the assertive package: it was getting big,
and not everyone wanted all the functionality.

The solution was to create several smaller packages with individual
components of functionality, for example assertive.base contains the
bare-minimum functionality; assertive.numbers contains functionality
related to numbers, etc.

Then the assertive package imports all the functions from the
component packages and reexports them.

That way people who want a small footprint (mostly other package
developers) can specify only what they need, and people who don't care
(mostly end users) can just type library(assertive) and get access to
everything.

-- 
Regards,
Richie

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