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
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