[R-pkg-devel] [FWD] [CRAN-pretest-archived] CRAN submission JuliaConnectoR 0.5.0

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 06/04/2020 10:49 a.m., Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> 
> On 6 April 2020 at 08:38, Ben Bolker wrote:
> |   Just reply to the CRAN maintainers and explain this situation.  It¨s
> | slightly buried, but the e-mail you received does say:
> |
> | > If you are fairly certain the rejection is a false positive, please reply-all to this
> | > message and explain.
> 
> True, but this misses the "Letter of the law" versus the "Spirit of the law".
> 
> It might be worth mentioning that use of attach() is seen, to find one poor
> analogy, pretty much like use of global variables these days. "Just because
> you could does not mean you should".
> 
> See e.g. one of the first google hits for 'r do not use attach' here:
> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10067680/why-is-it-not-advisable-to-use-attach-in-r-and-what-should-i-use-instead

I don't have a strong opinion on this:  the proposed use seems to be no 
worse than library() or require().  Those are fine for users to use, but 
are discouraged in a package.  If the attach() never happens without an 
explicit request from the user (and that's what it sounds like), I'd say 
it's probably okay.

However, there is an easy workaround:  just return the environment 
without attaching it.  Then the user has the choice of attaching it, or 
using it as a prefix when they call the functions in it.  So it's not as 
though this will destroy the utility of the package if Stefan isn't 
allowed to call attach().

Duncan Murdoch