On Fri, 4 Nov 2005, Robert Gentleman wrote: > Recently I have added a lib.loc argument to require, so that > it is more consistent with library. However, there are some oddities > that folks have pointed out, and we do not have a documented description > of the semantics for what should happen when the lib.loc parameter is > provided. > > Proposal: the most common use case seems to be one where any other > dependencies, or calls to library/require should also see the library > specified in the lib.loc parameter for the duration of the initial call > to library. Hence, we should modify the library search path for the > duration of the call (via .libPaths). > > The alternative, is to not do that. Which is what happens now. > > Both have costs, automatically setting the library search path, of > course, means that users that do not want that behavior have to manually > remove things from their library. But if almost no one does that, and > most folks I have asked have said they want the lib.loc parameter to be > used for other loading. > > Comments?
There is a parallel set of issues with loadNamespace and the dependent namespaces it loads. I think I would want the same semantics (whatever they are) for loadNamespace and library. I set my standard libraries in R_LIBS, so when I use lib.loc it is for experimental things. So I would neither want the .libPaths changed nor be affected if they were. -- Brian D. Ripley, [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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 272866 (PA) Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595 ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel