developing package: dealing with namespaces
On 04/02/2013 12:59 PM, Ross Boylan wrote:
I am tweaking an R package for which I have the source; the relevant code is in R not C. I'm making changes to the package code. What is the best workflow for doing this? I recall the advice used to be to remove the NAMESPACE during development, but I don't think this is possible anymore. For simplicity, suppose I have an outer level function f defined in f.R and an innder g in g.R defined in the package. My understanding is that if I modify g.R and load it (e.g., C-c C-l in ESS) this will have no effect on the code the f calls, since the latter is in a namespace. If I modify f.R and import it, I'm not sure if it can find g at all if it has not been exported. Web searches and reviewing the R Extensions manual have turned up information on how to trace into functions in namesapces, but not on the larger development cycle.
I think the best workflow is to do the edits outside of R, and re-install the package to test. It is possible to do edits to a loaded package, using the assignInNamespace() function, but I don't think there's a simple workflow that doesn't end up with multiple copies of functions, and possible confusion over which version - is in the source, so will be saved - is in the global env, so will be executed by a user at the top level - is in the namespace, so will be executed by calls from other functions in the namespace. This is something that could probably be handled well by a smart editor. I don't know if any of the existing IDEs do it. Duncan Murdoch