R CMD check barfs at 'suggested' package

I have been running R CMD check for the first time on of our own
packages, which otherwise builds, installs and runs just fine. The
package depends on package akima and suggests package multtest;
suggesting multtest is indicated because a) it loads a lot of other
Bioconductor packages, very slowly, and b) it is only needed for one
specific subroutine, which executes require(multtest) every time it's
called.

Now, when I run R CMD check on our package, it terminates when
checking the examples in the documentation, claiming that

Error in .C("get_stat", as.double(tmp$X), as.integer(tmp$m),
as.integer(tmp$n),  :
        "C" function name not in DLL for package 'multtest'
Execution halted

A closer look at  the output in the -Ex.Rout file shows that this
does indeed happen when calling the function mt.teststat in multtest,
to which this piece of code belongs. It also shows however, that this
only happens in the *second* chunk of example code containing the
calling function; before that, three calls to the offending function
in the first chunk (ie in a different .Rd file) are executed just
fine. Furthermore, if I change the status of multtest from Suggests
to Depends in the DESCRIPTION file, R CMD check processes our package
without problem.

My impression is that R gets confused when re-loading multtest for
the second chunk of example code (for what it's worth, the
offending .C("get_stat"...) does have a PACKAGE argument).

My question now: Is there any way of avoiding this problem without
loading multtest by default? Would e.g. using a namespace help? If
so, how specifically? Etc.?

Thanks for your time (and expertise),

alexander


platform powerpc-apple-darwin7.9.0
arch     powerpc
os       darwin7.9.0
system   powerpc, darwin7.9.0
status   Patched
major    2
minor    1.0
year     2005
month    05
day      12
language R


Alexander.Ploner at ki.se
Medical Epidemiology & Biostatistics
Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm
Tel: ++46-8-524-82329
Fax: ++46-8-31 49 75



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