[R] Building Packages.

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> "Duncan Murdoch on Wed, 20 Mar 2024 13:20:12 -0400 writes:

    > On 20/03/2024 1:07 p.m., Duncan Murdoch wrote:
    >> On 20/03/2024 12:37 p.m., Ben Bolker wrote:

    >>> Ivan, can you give more detail on this? I've heard this
    >>> issue mentioned, but when I open RStudio and run
    >>> find("install.packages") it returns
    >>> "utils::install.packages", and running dump() from
    >>> within RStudio console and from an external "R
    >>> --vanilla" gives identical results.
    >>> 
    >>> I thought at one point this might only refer to the GUI
    >>> package-installation interface, but you seem to be
    >>> saying it's the install.packages() function as well.
    >>> 
    >>> Running an up-to-date RStudio on Linux, FWIW -- maybe
    >>> weirdness only happens on other OSs?
    >> 
    >> On MacOS, I see this:
    >> 
    >> > install.packages function (...)  .rs.callAs(name, hook,
    >> original, ...)  <environment: 0x7fa7c72a6268>
    >> 
    >> I get the same results as you from find().  I'm not sure
    >> what RStudio is doing to give a different value for the
    >> function than what find() sees.

    > Turns out that RStudio replaces the install.packages
    > object in the utils package.

    > Duncan Murdoch

Yes, and this has been the case for several years now, and I
have mentioned this several times, too  (though some of it
possibly not in a public R-* mailing list).

And yes, that they modify the package environment
  as.environment("package:utils")
but leave the
  namespace  asNamespace("utils")
unchanged, makes it harder to see what's
going on (but also has less severe consequences; if they kept to
the otherwise universal *rule* that the namespace and package must have the same objects
apart from those only in the namespace,
people would not even have access to R's true install.packages()
but only see the RStudio fake^Hsubstitute..

We are still not happy with their decision. Also
help(install.packages) goes to R's documentation of R's
install.packages, so there's even more misleading of useRs.

Martin