[R] how to deal with deprecated functions

Rui Barradas ru|pb@rr@d@@ @end|ng |rom @@po@pt
Thu Dec 5 15:49:18 CET 2019


Hello,

If you are talking about CRAN packages, like it seems you are, then 
there is no general purpose solution. What is deprecated depends on each 
package's team of developers/maintainer.

Since R is open source and so must be all CRAN packages, a possible 
solution is to have your own package of deprecated functions. This 
package could be used while you don't recode your scripts, or even used 
for ever, as long as those functions, maybe with a different name,  do 
not conflict with the new behavior of the rest of the packages they came 
from. Is not that difficult to write a package, and in this case you 
would even have more examples, if needed.


Hope this helps,

Rui Barradas

Às 19:07 de 04/12/19, Nestor Toledo escreveu:
> Hello everyone, even I'm not fluent in coding, R has become a 
> fundamental part of my daily work as a researcher and I'm very much 
> grateful for such a wonderful, open tool. However, I have faced in many 
> opportunities the problems associated with updates/upgrades of packages. 
> Frequently packages developers modify command syntax or directly 
> deprecate entire functions. This becomes a nuisance, since I must to 
> recode my scripts partially or totally, or even search for alternative 
> functions in other packages. Is there any solution to this, other than 
> skip updates or keeping old versions installed in a different folder? 
> Could be acceptable ask developers to do not deprecate functions but 
> keep them as "legacy" ones or similar?
> 
> Thanks in advance and I apologize for my deficient English grammar
>



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