[R-pkg-devel] Writing a portable package that imports functions only available on Windows

[Richard Cotton]

I have a package that uses win.version from the utils package.

I've made my R code safe to use across platforms, I check that the OS is
Windows before calling win.version.

The NAMESPACE file contains the line

importFrom(utils,win.version)

which causes an install failure under other OSes since that function
doesn't exist.

Can I use this platform-dependent function and still have a cross-platform
package?

Also, it seems like it would be nicer if the utils package always included
this function and returned NA with a warning on platforms other than
Windows.  Does that sound like a reasonable change?

-- 
Regards,
Richie

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