help() and lib.loc (was Re: question about sgeostat)

On Tue, 30 May 2000, Albrecht Gebhardt wrote:

Now I have stolen

.First.lib <- function(lib, pkg) {
  if(version$major==0 && version$minor < 62)
    stop("This version for R 0.62 or later")
  library.dynam("tripack", pkg, lib)
  provide(tripack)
}

from library(spatial) and library(tripack,lib.loc="path/to/somewhere")
works now.

 ....

But help() still does not find anything about the library in
"path/to/somewhere", even if I pass lib.loc="path/to/somewhere" to help.
Is still something wrong with my .First.lib function?

First.lib is not relevant to help.  Have you loaded the package or not?

Something like

help(interp, package="akima", lib.loc="/ext/R/library")
help(package="akima", lib.loc="/ext/R/library") 

works whether it is loaded or not.  The semantics of this got changed
around 0.99.0 to try to ensure that the help came from loaded libraries.
So you can do

library(akima, lib.loc="/ext/R/library")
?interp
help(interp, package="akima")

and you will get the help from the loaded library even if there is
a version in the standard library.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

help(tri.mesh)

help(tri.mesh, package="tripack", lib.loc="~/R-Lib-x86/")

help(tri.mesh, package="tripack", lib.loc="/home/users/agebhard/R-Lib-x86/")