[Rd] [External] Re: quiet namespace load is noisy

[Yihui Xie]

I mentioned the same thing a couple of months ago but didn't get a
response: https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2019-May/077774.html

In your case of package vignettes, it is easy enough to suppress the
messages via the knitr chunk option message = FALSE. However, I still
wonder if it will be a better idea if requireNamespace(quietly = TRUE)
can suppress such messages, because in the past, we can test if a
package is loadable via

  if (requireNamespace(pkg, quietly = TRUE)) { ... }

And now we have to use suppressMessages() or
suppressPackageStartupMessages() plus quietly = TRUE:

  if (suppressPackageStartupMessages(requireNamespace(pkg, quietly =
TRUE))) { ... }

I'm aware of the fact that if a package has packageStartupMessage() in
its .onLoad(), requireNamespace(quietly = TRUE) won't suppress such
messages, and we still have use suppressPackageStartupMessages(). This
statement in Russ's post was incorrect:

> After all, other package startup messages ARE suppressed

but I feel it is a nice feature request for quietly = TRUE to call
suppressPackageStartupMessages() automatically.

Regards,
Yihui
--
https://yihui.name

On Tue, Jul 23, 2019 at 9:29 AM Henrik Singmann <singmann using gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Russ,
>
> I had the same problem in my vignettes and setting both message and warning
> to FALSE seems to remove all unwanted output:
>
> ```{r message=FALSE, warning=FALSE}
> library("afex")
> library("ggplot2")
> library("cowplot")
> theme_set(theme_grey())
> ```
>
> Result:
> https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/afex/vignettes/afex_plot_introduction.html
>
> Best,
> Henrik
>
>
> Am Di., 23. Juli 2019 um 14:52 Uhr schrieb Ben Bolker <bbolker using gmail.com>:
>
> >
> >   Does setting message=FALSE in the chunk options of the vignette help?
> >
> >   Or less preferably, using supressMessages() ?
> >
> > On 2019-07-23 9:36 a.m., Lenth, Russell V wrote:
> > > Lionel,
> > >
> > > Thanks for your response. I understand that method overriding can be a
> > serious issue, but as you say, this is not something that the user can act
> > upon. Yet the message lands at the user’s feet.
> > >
> > > In my case, the messages are cluttering my package vignettes, and may or
> > may not represent what users see if they themselves run the vignette code,
> > depending on what version of ggplot2, etc. they have. I will certainly
> > update my ggplot2 installation and that will help. But basically I don’t
> > ever want these kinds of messages to appear in my vignettes, so I will seek
> > some other workaround.
> > >
> > > Russ
> > >
> > > Sent from my iPhone
> > >
> > >> On Jul 23, 2019, at 1:32 AM, Lionel Henry <lionel using rstudio.com> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> Hello,
> > >>
> > >> I think `quietly` should only silence normal masking messages
> > >> intended for users and providing information about normal
> > >> behaviour, such as masking.  This is not the case here as the
> > >> message is about overriding of S3 methods, which has global
> > >> effect and is rather problematic. It may change behaviour of
> > >> package and script code in unpredictable ways.
> > >>
> > >> This is not something that the user can act upon, the developers
> > >> of the parties involved need to be contacted by users so they can
> > >> fix it (the developers of the conflicting methods might not be
> > >> aware if the generic is from a third party package, such as
> > >> base::print()). In the case of ggplot2 vs rlang, you can update
> > >> ggplot2 to the latest version to fix these messages.
> > >>
> > >>> After all, other package startup messages ARE suppressed, and
> > >>> even error messages are suppressed
> > >>
> > >> Note that `quietly = TRUE` does not really suppress error
> > >> messages for missing packages. The errors are converted to a
> > >> boolean return value, and thus become normal behaviour, for which
> > >> it makes sense to suppress the message. This does not imply the
> > >> S3 overriding message should be suppressed as well.
> > >>
> > >> Best,
> > >> Lionel
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>> On 23 Jul 2019, at 06:29, Lenth, Russell V <russell-lenth using uiowa.edu>
> > wrote:
> > >>>
> > >>> Dear R-devel,
> > >>>
> > >>> Consider the following clip (in R version 3.6.0, Windows):
> > >>>
> > >>>> requireNamespace("ggplot2", quietly = TRUE)
> > >>>   Registered S3 methods overwritten by 'ggplot2':
> > >>>     method         from
> > >>>     [.quosures     rlang
> > >>>     c.quosures     rlang
> > >>>     print.quosures rlang
> > >>>
> > >>> It seems to me that if one specifies 'quietly = TRUE', then messages
> > about S3 method overrides should be quieted along with everything else.
> > After all, other package startup messages ARE suppressed, and even error
> > messages are suppressed:
> > >>>
> > >>>> requireNamespace("xyz", quietly = TRUE)
> > >>>> ## (it is silent even though there is no "xyz" package)
> > >>>
> > >>> Thanks
> > >>>
> > >>> Russ Lenth
> > >>> U of Iowa
> > >>>
> > >>> ______________________________________________
> > >>> R-devel using r-project.org mailing list
> > >>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> > >>
> > > ______________________________________________
> > > R-devel using r-project.org mailing list
> > > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> > >
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-devel using r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> >
>
>
> --
> Dr. Henrik Singmann
> Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
> University of Warwick, UK
> http://singmann.org
>
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