[Bioc-devel] inquiry about possibility of package name change

Martin,

The lab, who developed the GUIDE-seq protocol, just published a python
tool called guideseq in Nature Biotechnology, which is too similar to
our Bioconductor package name GUIDEseq.

I am wondering if  there is an easy way to change the package name, or
perhaps give it an alias to point to the same package.  Thanks!

Changing package names is strongly discouraged, since the internet tends 
to have a strong memory. However, the recommended approach is like 
deprecating a function, as described at

   http://bioconductor.org/developers/how-to/deprecation/

In the current devel, we would clone your current code base to XXX, and add

     .onLoad <- function(...) {
         warning("Package 'GUIDEseq' is deprecated, use package 'XXX'")
     }

in the next devel cycle, you'd change that to

     .onLoad <- function(...) {
         stop("Package 'GUIDEseq' is defunct, use package 'XXX'")
     }

and remove all code other code / documentation from GUIDEseq. In the 
devel cycle after that, we'd remove GUIDEseq from the manifest.

Your users would see the deprecation warning after the next release 
(October?) and would have to switch by the release after that (March?).

Martin

Best regards,

Julie

This email message may contain legally privileged and/or...{{dropped:2}}