I am a newbie package builder who successfully built a "Hello world" package
but am now having trouble building a package with S4 functionality. I
thought I would start by building a package consisting of just the first
example under the setGeneric help page in a "fresh" 2.10.0 (windows) console
(methods loaded at startup). The example:

## create a new generic function, with a default method
props <- function(object) attributes(object)
setGeneric("props")

I executed those commands, then

package.skeleton("props", list="props", namespace=TRUE)

I edited the help files, put "Depends: methods" into the DESCRIPTION file,
and put "export(props)" as the only line in the NAMESPACE file.

When I ran "Rcmd check" on the "props" folder, it hit an error:

* checking whether package 'props' can be installed ... ERROR
Installation failed.

The 00install.out file said it found an unexpected '<' in the props.R file.
I guessed it was due to the argument
'default = <S4 object of class structure("MethodsList", package =
"methods")>'
in the structure definition of props in props.R.

When I deleted that argument and re-checked the "props" folder, it hit a new
error:

*checking for missing documentation entries ... ERROR
Error in FUN("props"[[1L]], ...) :

Now I am guessing that there's something about my defaults -- related to
setGeneric -- that won't allow this simple S4 example to build.

Any guidance would be appreciated. Thank you.

Dan Murphy

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