[R-pkg-devel] Conditionally register method with generic in other package
On 06/12/2017 8:44 AM, Bill Denney wrote:
On Dec 6, 2017, at 07:45, Joshua Ulrich <josh.m.ulrich at gmail.com> wrote: To avoid excessive dependencies, I would like to only register foo.bar() if package A is installed at the time package B is installed. If package A is installed after package B, then warn the user when package B is loaded and/or attached, so they can re-install A and have foo.bar() registered correctly.
One simple solution would be to wrap the instantiation of foo.bar in a require test:
if (require(A)) {
foo.bar <- function(...) {
print("To be or not to be")
}
} else {
message("To use the foo.bar function, please install package A.")
}
It's usually better to use requireNamespace("A") instead of require("A")
(and the quotes are needed in requireNamespace(), but optional in
require()). That tries to load the package, but doesn't mess with the
search list.
But that'll likely cause warnings, unless the same condition is used in
the NAMESPACE file where there should be an entry
S3method(foo, bar)
The thing is, I'm not sure if
if (requireNamespace("A"))
S3method(foo, bar)
is legal in a NAMESPACE file.
Duncan Murdoch