[R] On-demand importing of a package

[Martin Morgan]

On 11/22/2011 01:16 PM, Gábor Csárdi wrote:
> Hi Josh,
>
> On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 3:31 PM, Joshua Wiley<jwiley.psych at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> Hi Gábor,
>>
>> You could import rowSums.  This will not fully attach Matrix.  I am
>> not sure there is a really good solution for what you want to do.  To
>> fully use and validate your package, Matrix appears to be required.
>> This is different from simply, for example, enhancing the Matrix
>> package.
>
> importing rowSums() from NAMESPACE requires having Matrix in the
> 'Depends:' line, I think. I would like to avoid that, if possible.

No need to Depend:. Use

Imports: Matrix

plus in the NAMESPACE file

  importFrom(Matrix, rowSums)

Why do you not want to do this? Matrix is available for everyone, 
Imports: doesn't influence the package search path. There is a cost 
associated with loading the library in the first place, but...?

>
> Sure, to validate my package it is required. That is fine. For "fully"
> using it might be required, but most users don't fully use a package,
> they just use 1-20-50% of the functionality, depending on the size of
> the package. My package does not depend on Matrix, except in less than
> 1% of its (quite many) functions.

I'm more into black-and-white -- it either needs Matrix or not; 
apparently it does.

>
>> You could just write the functions assuming matrix is there, make sure
>> the examples are marked don't run, and tell users if they want to use
>> them, they need to load Matrix first.  I do this with OpenMx in my
>> package.
>
> Hmmm, this is close to what I want to do. Actually my functions work,
> even if Matrix is not there, but they work better with Matrix. The
> problem is that if I do this, then I get the error I've shown in my
> initial email. I.e. Matrix is there, it is loaded, but the rowSums()
> generic is not called for some reasons.

In another message you mention

 > Matrix:::rowSums(W)
Error in callGeneric() :
   'callGeneric' must be called from a generic function or method

but something else is going on -- you don't get to call methods 
directly; you're getting Matrix::rowSums (it's exported, so no need for 
a :::, see getNamespaceExports("Matrix")). Maybe traceback() after the 
error would be insightful?

Martin

>
> Thanks again,
> Gabor
>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Josh
>>
>> On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 12:16 PM, Gábor Csárdi<csardi at rmki.kfki.hu>  wrote:
>>> Dear All,
>>>
>>> in some functions of my package, I use the Matrix S4 class, as defined
>>> in the Matrix package.
>>>
>>> I don't want to depend on Matrix, however, because my package is
>>> perfectly fine without Matrix, most of the functionality does not need
>>> Matrix. Matrix is so included in the 'Suggests' line.
>>>
>>> I load Matrix via require(), from the functions that really need it.
>>> This mostly works fine, but I have an issue now that I cannot sort
>>> out.
>>>
>>> If I define a function like this in my package:
>>>
>>> f<- function() {
>>>   require(Matrix)
>>>   res<- sparseMatrix(dims=c(5, 5), i=1:5, j=1:5, x=1:5)
>>>   y<- rowSums(res)
>>>   res / y
>>> }
>>>
>>> then calling it from the R prompt I get
>>> Error in rowSums(res) : 'x' must be an array of at least two dimensions
>>>
>>> which basically means that the rowSums() in the base package is
>>> called, not the S4 generic in the Matrix package. Why is that?
>>> Is there any way to work around this problem, without depending on Matrix?
>>>
>>> I am doing this on R 2.14.0, x86_64-apple-darwin9.8.0.
>>>
>>> Thank You, Best Regards,
>>> Gabor
>>>
>>> --
>>> Gabor Csardi<csardi at rmki.kfki.hu>      MTA KFKI RMKI
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Joshua Wiley
>> Ph.D. Student, Health Psychology
>> Programmer Analyst II, ATS Statistical Consulting Group
>> University of California, Los Angeles
>> https://joshuawiley.com/
>>
>
>
>


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