[Rd] non-API SETLENGTH and friends will be dropped soon

[iuke-tier@ey m@iii@g oii uiow@@edu]

As part of clarifying and tightening the R API for packages the
non-API entry points SETLENGTH, TRUELENGTH, SET_TRUELENGTH, and
SET_GROWABLE_BIT will be removed from installed header files and,
where possible, hidden from package access. The first step will be to
turn current check NOTEs into WARNINGs; this will hopefully happen in
the next few weeks. Hopefully the process can be completed by early
January.

17 CRAN/BIOC packages currently make use of one or more of these entry
points. Most using SETLENGTH should transition to using xgetlength(),
which allocates a new vector, usually with a shorter length. There is
a small amount of overhead, and care is needed to protect the new
result, but this is a much safer option. R-devel does now include an
experimental API for creating resizable vectors, but it needs a great
deal of care to use safely. These options are described in a new
section "Resizing vectors" in the Writing R Extensions manual.

[If you are a maintainer of one of the 17 affected packages you should
receive a separate copy of this note.]

Best,

luke
~

-- 
Luke Tierney
Ralph E. Wareham Professor of Mathematical Sciences
University of Iowa                  Phone:             319-335-3386
Department of Statistics and        Fax:               319-335-3017
    Actuarial Science
241 Schaeffer Hall                  email:   luke-tierney using uiowa.edu
Iowa City, IA 52242                 WWW:  http://www.stat.uiowa.edu