[R-pkg-devel] loadMethod() not available with Rscript

[Martyn Plummer]

On Wed, 2017-09-20 at 09:45 -0500, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> Thierry,
> 
> This has always been a considerable puzzle, and the source of some amusement,
> to me.  It is a clear design bug in Rscript because _code that would
> otherwise work_ will not if it happens to rely on library(methods). S4 comes
> to mind.  This has also been answered at least a few times on SO.
> 
> Now, 'r' from littler always did this differently and lods methods, just like
> R itself does.  And 'r' still starts (way) faster as I once documented in a
> blog post.
> 
> If someone from R Core reads this and nods silently: please put this to rest
> and make sure Rscript also loads the methods package.

We have been here before, most recently in 2016

https://bugs.r-project.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=16921

There are opinions on both sides, of course, but the decision rests in
the hands of those who use extensively for its original purpose (i.e.
running short snippets of R code) and for whom the overhead from
loading the methods package is still unacceptable, despite being
substantially reduced since this decision was made 10 years ago.

Martyn

> Dirk
>