>>>>> Gábor Csárdi <csardi.ga...@gmail.com>
>>>>> on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 10:31:14 -0400 writes:
> Oh, you mean to put Matrix:: in the functions that need
> Matrix, right, of course. Then yes, this could be a
> solution. I have some issue with some new class
> definitions, but I can probably work them out.
> Gabor
otherwise, please contact matrix-auth...@r-project.org
(me being one of the two).
To the whole issue in the 'Subject': Yes, indeed importing from
Matrix i.e., loading the Matrix namespace, is slow notably compared to many
other parts of R including its startup.
I have not had time to investigate, but I even have a vague
feeling that it got slower than it used to be a
couple of R (and Matrix) versions ago.
Note that your timings below are a bit biased because you use
Rscript which unfortunately does not pre-[load + attach] the
'methods' package. But then your bias is only about 0.1 seconds
from my measurements (the time increases from 0.35 to 0.45; not
sure if this is still a good enough reason to omit 'methods'
from Rscript by default).
And ... yes, R is free (aka "libre") software, and proposals for
changes that speedup the loadNamespace("Matrix") without having
to change the R code inside Matrix much are highly appreciated.
Martin Maechler,
ETH Zurich
> On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 10:25 AM, Gábor Csárdi
> <csardi.ga...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Unfortunately that seems to be (almost) just as slow.
>>
>> ~$ time Rscript -e 'Matrix::summary; ls()' > /dev/null
>> real 0m2.785s user 0m2.668s sys 0m0.112s
>>
>> Gabor
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 10:11 AM, Prof Brian Ripley
>> <rip...@stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>>> On 29/10/2013 14:03, Gábor Csárdi wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Dear All,
>>>>
>>>> before its latest version my package had 'Imports:
>>>> Matrix' in its DESCRIPTION file, but it did not import
>>>> anything in NAMESPACE. Rather, some functions
>>>> explicitly loaded Matrix, as they needed. The reason
>>>> for this was that importing Matrix is really slow, and
>>>> only very few igraph functions need it. (I guess Matrix
>>>> is slow because of the many registered names, but that
>>>> is another question.)
>>>>
>>>> # Empty session: ~$ time Rscript -e 'ls()' > /dev/null
>>>> real 0m0.251s user 0m0.196s sys 0m0.049s
>>>>
>>>> # Without importing from Matrix: ~$ time Rscript -e
>>>> 'library(igraph); ls()' > /dev/null Loading required
>>>> package: methods real 0m0.419s user 0m0.363s sys
>>>> 0m0.049s
>>>>
>>>> # Adding importFrom(Matrix, sparseMatrix) to NAMESPACE:
>>>> ~$ time Rscript -e 'library(igraph); ls()' > /dev/null
>>>> Loading required package: methods real 0m2.963s user
>>>> 0m2.844s sys 0m0.115s
>>>>
>>>> This solution was fine with me, especially because
>>>> other packages depending on igraph and using Matrix
>>>> through igraph worked fine on the CRAN build servers,
>>>> as igraph brought Matrix with it. (The build servers
>>>> don't have recommended packages like Matrix available
>>>> by default.)
>>>>
>>>> Recently, R CMD check does not allow me to list Matrix
>>>> at Imports without importing something from it. This is
>>>> understandable, because it is an inconsistency after
>>>> all, but caused some headache for me.
>>>>
>>>> A 3s loading time for a package is IMHO much longer
>>>> than ideal, especially that loading R itself is ten
>>>> times faster. So I definitely don't want to import from
>>>> Matrix right now.
>>>>
>>>> The solution I settled with was to include Matrix in
>>>> 'Suggests', and the load it selectively, as before. Now
>>>> some packages depending on igraph are failing on the
>>>> CRAN build servers, which don't have Matrix installed
>>>> for these packages. (Luckily they are probably not
>>>> failing for users, because most users do have the
>>>> recommended packages.)
>>>>
>>>> In summary, it would be great to speed up imports.
>>>>
>>>> Another solution would be some mechanism that allows me
>>>> to import from a package as needed, not at the package
>>>> loading time. Something like a delayed importFrom().
>>>
>>>
>>> That is what Matrix:: does. There is nothing like
>>> enough here for us to tell why it would not suffice for
>>> you. (If you want to import something occasionally and
>>> then use it very many times, make a local copy.)
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Just wanted to bring up this issue.
>>>>
>>>> Best, Gabor
>>>>
>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Brian D. Ripley, rip...@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 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
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