[Rd] Rcmdr package dependencies
Dear r-devel members, My Rcmdr package depends on several other packages (tcltk, grDevices, utils, and car) and suggests a number of others (abind, aplpack, colorspace, effects, foreign, grid, Hmisc, lattice, leaps, lmtest, MASS, mgcv, multcomp, nlme, nnet, relimp, rgl, and RODBC). The reason for the distinction is that I don't want all of these packages to load when the Rcmdr loads; rather, the suggested packages are loaded as they're needed. But all of the packages -- both those under depends and those under suggests -- really are necessary for all of the features of the Rcmdr to work. For example, if the leaps package is absent, then the Subset model selection item in the Models menu is suppressed. This arrangement works reasonably well, but it makes it awkward to install the Rcmdr. If the user issues the command install.packages(Rcmdr), then the suggested packages aren't installed. On the other hand, if the user issues the command install.packages(Rcmdr, dependencies=TRUE), which is what I currently recommend, then suggested packages are installed recursively, causing dozens of packages, most of them actually unnecessary, to be installed. This issue has been growing more acute, and at this point even with a fast Internet connection it takes quite a while for all of the dependencies to download and install. I wonder whether I've missed something. Is there a way for me to arrange the Rcmdr package dependencies so that only the necessary packages (those currently listed under both depends and suggests and the packages on which they depend) are installed along with the Rcmdr, but the currently suggested packages aren't loaded when the Rcmdr loads? Any help would be appreciated. John -- John Fox, Professor Department of Sociology McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario, Canada web: socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Re: [Rd] Rcmdr package dependencies
John Fox wrote: Dear r-devel members, My Rcmdr package depends on several other packages (tcltk, grDevices, utils, and car) and suggests a number of others (abind, aplpack, colorspace, effects, foreign, grid, Hmisc, lattice, leaps, lmtest, MASS, mgcv, multcomp, nlme, nnet, relimp, rgl, and RODBC). The reason for the distinction is that I don't want all of these packages to load when the Rcmdr loads; rather, the suggested packages are loaded as they're needed. But all of the packages -- both those under depends and those under suggests -- really are necessary for all of the features of the Rcmdr to work. For example, if the leaps package is absent, then the Subset model selection item in the Models menu is suppressed. This arrangement works reasonably well, but it makes it awkward to install the Rcmdr. If the user issues the command install.packages(Rcmdr), then the suggested packages aren't installed. On the other hand, if the user issues the command install.packages(Rcmdr, dependencies=TRUE), which is what I currently recommend, then suggested packages are installed recursively, causing dozens of packages, most of them actually unnecessary, to be installed. This issue has been growing more acute, and at this point even with a fast Internet connection it takes quite a while for all of the dependencies to download and install. I wonder whether I've missed something. Is there a way for me to arrange the Rcmdr package dependencies so that only the necessary packages (those currently listed under both depends and suggests and the packages on which they depend) are installed along with the Rcmdr, but the currently suggested packages aren't loaded when the Rcmdr loads? Dear John, no, this is not possible. Consider your package A (or Rcmdr) suggests B that suggests C. Then A::foo uses the function B::bar which only works if C::dep is present. B works essentially without C but it requires C just to make bar work. Then this means your A::foo won't work if C is not installed and you won't get it with the setup mentioned above. In summary, I fear what you want might work well *now* (by chance), but it does not work in general. Best wishes, Uwe Any help would be appreciated. John -- John Fox, Professor Department of Sociology McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario, Canada web: socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Re: [Rd] Rcmdr package dependencies
Create a package called RcmdrInstall, say, with no content and have it depend on Rcmdr. RcmdrInstall would have all packages as dependencies while Rcmdr would only have the essential packages as dependencies. Install RcmdrInstall. That would also force Rcmdr to be installed. Now issue: library(Rcmdr) as before and the non-essentials won't be loaded. Thus the only difference between the current procedure and the new procedure as far as the user is concerned is that they install RcmdrInstall rather than Rcmdr. They load and run Rcmdr in the same way. On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 9:15 AM, John Fox j...@mcmaster.ca wrote: Dear r-devel members, My Rcmdr package depends on several other packages (tcltk, grDevices, utils, and car) and suggests a number of others (abind, aplpack, colorspace, effects, foreign, grid, Hmisc, lattice, leaps, lmtest, MASS, mgcv, multcomp, nlme, nnet, relimp, rgl, and RODBC). The reason for the distinction is that I don't want all of these packages to load when the Rcmdr loads; rather, the suggested packages are loaded as they're needed. But all of the packages -- both those under depends and those under suggests -- really are necessary for all of the features of the Rcmdr to work. For example, if the leaps package is absent, then the Subset model selection item in the Models menu is suppressed. This arrangement works reasonably well, but it makes it awkward to install the Rcmdr. If the user issues the command install.packages(Rcmdr), then the suggested packages aren't installed. On the other hand, if the user issues the command install.packages(Rcmdr, dependencies=TRUE), which is what I currently recommend, then suggested packages are installed recursively, causing dozens of packages, most of them actually unnecessary, to be installed. This issue has been growing more acute, and at this point even with a fast Internet connection it takes quite a while for all of the dependencies to download and install. I wonder whether I've missed something. Is there a way for me to arrange the Rcmdr package dependencies so that only the necessary packages (those currently listed under both depends and suggests and the packages on which they depend) are installed along with the Rcmdr, but the currently suggested packages aren't loaded when the Rcmdr loads? Any help would be appreciated. John -- John Fox, Professor Department of Sociology McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario, Canada web: socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Re: [Rd] Rcmdr package dependencies
Dear Uwe, -Original Message- From: Uwe Ligges [mailto:lig...@statistik.tu-dortmund.de] Sent: September-22-09 2:17 PM To: John Fox Cc: r-devel@r-project.org Subject: Re: [Rd] Rcmdr package dependencies John Fox wrote: Dear r-devel members, My Rcmdr package depends on several other packages (tcltk, grDevices, utils, and car) and suggests a number of others (abind, aplpack, colorspace, effects, foreign, grid, Hmisc, lattice, leaps, lmtest, MASS, mgcv, multcomp, nlme, nnet, relimp, rgl, and RODBC). The reason for the distinction is that I don't want all of these packages to load when the Rcmdr loads; rather, the suggested packages are loaded as they're needed. But all of the packages -- both those under depends and those under suggests -- really are necessary for all of the features of the Rcmdr to work. For example, if the leaps package is absent, then the Subset model selection item in the Models menu is suppressed. This arrangement works reasonably well, but it makes it awkward to install the Rcmdr. If the user issues the command install.packages(Rcmdr), then the suggested packages aren't installed. On the other hand, if the user issues the command install.packages(Rcmdr, dependencies=TRUE), which is what I currently recommend, then suggested packages are installed recursively, causing dozens of packages, most of them actually unnecessary, to be installed. This issue has been growing more acute, and at this point even with a fast Internet connection it takes quite a while for all of the dependencies to download and install. I wonder whether I've missed something. Is there a way for me to arrange the Rcmdr package dependencies so that only the necessary packages (those currently listed under both depends and suggests and the packages on which they depend) are installed along with the Rcmdr, but the currently suggested packages aren't loaded when the Rcmdr loads? Dear John, no, this is not possible. Consider your package A (or Rcmdr) suggests B that suggests C. Then A::foo uses the function B::bar which only works if C::dep is present. B works essentially without C but it requires C just to make bar work. Then this means your A::foo won't work if C is not installed and you won't get it with the setup mentioned above. In summary, I fear what you want might work well *now* (by chance), but it does not work in general. I agree that what I want to do isn't bullet-proof. I think, however, that in most, if not all, cases, the Rcmdr dialogs will work even if packages suggested by currently directly suggested packages were not installed. In fact, this is what happens when a package is installed with the default dependencies=FALSE. If it turns out that some such indirect dependency is actually necessary, I could add that package to those directly suggested (were such a mechanism possible). I'd save users a lot of downloads at the price of occasionally having to specify a dependency explicitly. Thanks, John Best wishes, Uwe Any help would be appreciated. John -- John Fox, Professor Department of Sociology McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario, Canada web: socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Re: [Rd] Rcmdr package dependencies
Dear Gabor, I thought of this solution but rejected it, perhaps too hastily, because it seemed awkward. I suppose, however, that since the Rcmdr package would be unchanged, a user could choose to install it as at present with dependencies=TRUE, or alternatively install the RcmdrInstall package and avoid the recursive installation of suggested packages. Maybe the idea is a good one after all. Thank you, John -Original Message- From: Gabor Grothendieck [mailto:ggrothendi...@gmail.com] Sent: September-22-09 2:32 PM To: John Fox Cc: r-devel@r-project.org Subject: Re: [Rd] Rcmdr package dependencies Create a package called RcmdrInstall, say, with no content and have it depend on Rcmdr. RcmdrInstall would have all packages as dependencies while Rcmdr would only have the essential packages as dependencies. Install RcmdrInstall. That would also force Rcmdr to be installed. Now issue: library(Rcmdr) as before and the non-essentials won't be loaded. Thus the only difference between the current procedure and the new procedure as far as the user is concerned is that they install RcmdrInstall rather than Rcmdr. They load and run Rcmdr in the same way. On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 9:15 AM, John Fox j...@mcmaster.ca wrote: Dear r-devel members, My Rcmdr package depends on several other packages (tcltk, grDevices, utils, and car) and suggests a number of others (abind, aplpack, colorspace, effects, foreign, grid, Hmisc, lattice, leaps, lmtest, MASS, mgcv, multcomp, nlme, nnet, relimp, rgl, and RODBC). The reason for the distinction is that I don't want all of these packages to load when the Rcmdr loads; rather, the suggested packages are loaded as they're needed. But all of the packages -- both those under depends and those under suggests -- really are necessary for all of the features of the Rcmdr to work. For example, if the leaps package is absent, then the Subset model selection item in the Models menu is suppressed. This arrangement works reasonably well, but it makes it awkward to install the Rcmdr. If the user issues the command install.packages(Rcmdr), then the suggested packages aren't installed. On the other hand, if the user issues the command install.packages(Rcmdr, dependencies=TRUE), which is what I currently recommend, then suggested packages are installed recursively, causing dozens of packages, most of them actually unnecessary, to be installed. This issue has been growing more acute, and at this point even with a fast Internet connection it takes quite a while for all of the dependencies to download and install. I wonder whether I've missed something. Is there a way for me to arrange the Rcmdr package dependencies so that only the necessary packages (those currently listed under both depends and suggests and the packages on which they depend) are installed along with the Rcmdr, but the currently suggested packages aren't loaded when the Rcmdr loads? Any help would be appreciated. John -- John Fox, Professor Department of Sociology McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario, Canada web: socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Re: [Rd] Rcmdr package dependencies
To make it foolproof at Rcmdr's load time (i.e. in the .onLoad function) you could check whether RcmdrInstall was available (not necessarily loaded, just available). If not, then you could issue a message asking the user to install it. This would help the user avoid the situation where they install Rcmdr without RcmdrInstall and thereby not have the other packages available. On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 2:54 PM, John Fox j...@mcmaster.ca wrote: Dear Gabor, I thought of this solution but rejected it, perhaps too hastily, because it seemed awkward. I suppose, however, that since the Rcmdr package would be unchanged, a user could choose to install it as at present with dependencies=TRUE, or alternatively install the RcmdrInstall package and avoid the recursive installation of suggested packages. Maybe the idea is a good one after all. Thank you, John -Original Message- From: Gabor Grothendieck [mailto:ggrothendi...@gmail.com] Sent: September-22-09 2:32 PM To: John Fox Cc: r-devel@r-project.org Subject: Re: [Rd] Rcmdr package dependencies Create a package called RcmdrInstall, say, with no content and have it depend on Rcmdr. RcmdrInstall would have all packages as dependencies while Rcmdr would only have the essential packages as dependencies. Install RcmdrInstall. That would also force Rcmdr to be installed. Now issue: library(Rcmdr) as before and the non-essentials won't be loaded. Thus the only difference between the current procedure and the new procedure as far as the user is concerned is that they install RcmdrInstall rather than Rcmdr. They load and run Rcmdr in the same way. On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 9:15 AM, John Fox j...@mcmaster.ca wrote: Dear r-devel members, My Rcmdr package depends on several other packages (tcltk, grDevices, utils, and car) and suggests a number of others (abind, aplpack, colorspace, effects, foreign, grid, Hmisc, lattice, leaps, lmtest, MASS, mgcv, multcomp, nlme, nnet, relimp, rgl, and RODBC). The reason for the distinction is that I don't want all of these packages to load when the Rcmdr loads; rather, the suggested packages are loaded as they're needed. But all of the packages -- both those under depends and those under suggests -- really are necessary for all of the features of the Rcmdr to work. For example, if the leaps package is absent, then the Subset model selection item in the Models menu is suppressed. This arrangement works reasonably well, but it makes it awkward to install the Rcmdr. If the user issues the command install.packages(Rcmdr), then the suggested packages aren't installed. On the other hand, if the user issues the command install.packages(Rcmdr, dependencies=TRUE), which is what I currently recommend, then suggested packages are installed recursively, causing dozens of packages, most of them actually unnecessary, to be installed. This issue has been growing more acute, and at this point even with a fast Internet connection it takes quite a while for all of the dependencies to download and install. I wonder whether I've missed something. Is there a way for me to arrange the Rcmdr package dependencies so that only the necessary packages (those currently listed under both depends and suggests and the packages on which they depend) are installed along with the Rcmdr, but the currently suggested packages aren't loaded when the Rcmdr loads? Any help would be appreciated. John -- John Fox, Professor Department of Sociology McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario, Canada web: socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Re: [Rd] Rcmdr package dependencies
Dear Gabor, At present, the Rcmdr package checks whether its dependencies are present and offers to install them if they are not. Also at present, it installs its dependencies with dep=TRUE, but that could be changed. I suppose that I could simply rely on this mechanism rather than have a separate RcmdrInstall package or advise users to install the Rcmdr itself with dep=TRUE. Best, John -Original Message- From: Gabor Grothendieck [mailto:ggrothendi...@gmail.com] Sent: September-22-09 3:09 PM To: John Fox Cc: r-devel@r-project.org Subject: Re: [Rd] Rcmdr package dependencies To make it foolproof at Rcmdr's load time (i.e. in the .onLoad function) you could check whether RcmdrInstall was available (not necessarily loaded, just available). If not, then you could issue a message asking the user to install it. This would help the user avoid the situation where they install Rcmdr without RcmdrInstall and thereby not have the other packages available. On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 2:54 PM, John Fox j...@mcmaster.ca wrote: Dear Gabor, I thought of this solution but rejected it, perhaps too hastily, because it seemed awkward. I suppose, however, that since the Rcmdr package would be unchanged, a user could choose to install it as at present with dependencies=TRUE, or alternatively install the RcmdrInstall package and avoid the recursive installation of suggested packages. Maybe the idea is a good one after all. Thank you, John -Original Message- From: Gabor Grothendieck [mailto:ggrothendi...@gmail.com] Sent: September-22-09 2:32 PM To: John Fox Cc: r-devel@r-project.org Subject: Re: [Rd] Rcmdr package dependencies Create a package called RcmdrInstall, say, with no content and have it depend on Rcmdr. RcmdrInstall would have all packages as dependencies while Rcmdr would only have the essential packages as dependencies. Install RcmdrInstall. That would also force Rcmdr to be installed. Now issue: library(Rcmdr) as before and the non-essentials won't be loaded. Thus the only difference between the current procedure and the new procedure as far as the user is concerned is that they install RcmdrInstall rather than Rcmdr. They load and run Rcmdr in the same way. On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 9:15 AM, John Fox j...@mcmaster.ca wrote: Dear r-devel members, My Rcmdr package depends on several other packages (tcltk, grDevices, utils, and car) and suggests a number of others (abind, aplpack, colorspace, effects, foreign, grid, Hmisc, lattice, leaps, lmtest, MASS, mgcv, multcomp, nlme, nnet, relimp, rgl, and RODBC). The reason for the distinction is that I don't want all of these packages to load when the Rcmdr loads; rather, the suggested packages are loaded as they're needed. But all of the packages -- both those under depends and those under suggests -- really are necessary for all of the features of the Rcmdr to work. For example, if the leaps package is absent, then the Subset model selection item in the Models menu is suppressed. This arrangement works reasonably well, but it makes it awkward to install the Rcmdr. If the user issues the command install.packages(Rcmdr), then the suggested packages aren't installed. On the other hand, if the user issues the command install.packages(Rcmdr, dependencies=TRUE), which is what I currently recommend, then suggested packages are installed recursively, causing dozens of packages, most of them actually unnecessary, to be installed. This issue has been growing more acute, and at this point even with a fast Internet connection it takes quite a while for all of the dependencies to download and install. I wonder whether I've missed something. Is there a way for me to arrange the Rcmdr package dependencies so that only the necessary packages (those currently listed under both depends and suggests and the packages on which they depend) are installed along with the Rcmdr, but the currently suggested packages aren't loaded when the Rcmdr loads? Any help would be appreciated. John -- John Fox, Professor Department of Sociology McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario, Canada web: socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Re: [Rd] Rcmdr package dependencies
John Fox wrote: Dear Uwe, -Original Message- From: Uwe Ligges [mailto:lig...@statistik.tu-dortmund.de] Sent: September-22-09 2:17 PM To: John Fox Cc: r-devel@r-project.org Subject: Re: [Rd] Rcmdr package dependencies John Fox wrote: Dear r-devel members, My Rcmdr package depends on several other packages (tcltk, grDevices, utils, and car) and suggests a number of others (abind, aplpack, colorspace, effects, foreign, grid, Hmisc, lattice, leaps, lmtest, MASS, mgcv, multcomp, nlme, nnet, relimp, rgl, and RODBC). The reason for the distinction is that I don't want all of these packages to load when the Rcmdr loads; rather, the suggested packages are loaded as they're needed. But all of the packages -- both those under depends and those under suggests -- really are necessary for all of the features of the Rcmdr to work. For example, if the leaps package is absent, then the Subset model selection item in the Models menu is suppressed. This arrangement works reasonably well, but it makes it awkward to install the Rcmdr. If the user issues the command install.packages(Rcmdr), then the suggested packages aren't installed. On the other hand, if the user issues the command install.packages(Rcmdr, dependencies=TRUE), which is what I currently recommend, then suggested packages are installed recursively, causing dozens of packages, most of them actually unnecessary, to be installed. This issue has been growing more acute, and at this point even with a fast Internet connection it takes quite a while for all of the dependencies to download and install. I wonder whether I've missed something. Is there a way for me to arrange the Rcmdr package dependencies so that only the necessary packages (those currently listed under both depends and suggests and the packages on which they depend) are installed along with the Rcmdr, but the currently suggested packages aren't loaded when the Rcmdr loads? Dear John, no, this is not possible. Consider your package A (or Rcmdr) suggests B that suggests C. Then A::foo uses the function B::bar which only works if C::dep is present. B works essentially without C but it requires C just to make bar work. Then this means your A::foo won't work if C is not installed and you won't get it with the setup mentioned above. In summary, I fear what you want might work well *now* (by chance), but it does not work in general. I agree that what I want to do isn't bullet-proof. I think, however, that in most, if not all, cases, the Rcmdr dialogs will work even if packages suggested by currently directly suggested packages were not installed. In fact, this is what happens when a package is installed with the default dependencies=FALSE. If it turns out that some such indirect dependency is actually necessary, I could add that package to those directly suggested (were such a mechanism possible). I'd save users a lot of downloads at the price of occasionally having to specify a dependency explicitly. Thanks for the explanation. Unfortunately the current infrastructure works with recursive calling with the same arguments. In this case we'd need some code that allows to have the first level different from the rest of the recursion. Perhaps one way to go would be to install Rcmdr including its dependencies (only) and provide some simple function that installs its suggests and their dependencies afterwards if not available. Hmmm, on he other hand I do now want to suggest to have yet another mechanism such as the biocLite function that I still dislike. Just some thoughts, best wishes, Uwe Thanks, John Best wishes, Uwe Any help would be appreciated. John -- John Fox, Professor Department of Sociology McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario, Canada web: socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Re: [Rd] Rcmdr package dependencies
* On 2009-09-22 at 20:16 +0200 Uwe Ligges wrote: no, this is not possible. Consider your package A (or Rcmdr) suggests B that suggests C. Then A::foo uses the function B::bar which only works if C::dep is present. B works essentially without C but it requires C just to make bar work. Then this means your A::foo won't work if C is not installed and you won't get it with the setup mentioned above. In summary, I fear what you want might work well *now* (by chance), but it does not work in general. In general, one would expect a given package to function when its suggested packages are not available. As such, it seems quite reasonable to install a package, its Depends, Imports, and Suggests, but not install Suggests recursively. I think you could achieve such an installation using two calls to install.packages: install.packages(Rcmdr) Rcmdr.Suggests - strsplit(packageDescription(Rcmdr)$Suggests, ,\\s?)[[1]] ## need extra cleanup since packageDescription(blah)$Suggests ## Returns package names with versions as strings wantPkgs - sub(^([^ ]+).*, \\1, Rcmdr.Suggests) havePkgs - installed.packages()[, Package] wantPkgs - wantPkgs[!(wantPkgs %in% havePkgs)] install.packages(wantPkgs) + seth -- Seth Falcon | @sfalcon | http://userprimary.net/user __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Re: [Rd] Rcmdr package dependencies
Dear Seth, -Original Message- From: Seth Falcon [mailto:s...@userprimary.net] Sent: September-22-09 5:13 PM To: Uwe Ligges Cc: John Fox; r-devel@r-project.org Subject: Re: [Rd] Rcmdr package dependencies * On 2009-09-22 at 20:16 +0200 Uwe Ligges wrote: no, this is not possible. Consider your package A (or Rcmdr) suggests B that suggests C. Then A::foo uses the function B::bar which only works if C::dep is present. B works essentially without C but it requires C just to make bar work. Then this means your A::foo won't work if C is not installed and you won't get it with the setup mentioned above. In summary, I fear what you want might work well *now* (by chance), but it does not work in general. In general, one would expect a given package to function when its suggested packages are not available. As such, it seems quite reasonable to install a package, its Depends, Imports, and Suggests, but not install Suggests recursively. I think you could achieve such an installation using two calls to install.packages: install.packages(Rcmdr) Rcmdr.Suggests - strsplit(packageDescription(Rcmdr)$Suggests, ,\\s?)[[1]] ## need extra cleanup since packageDescription(blah)$Suggests ## Returns package names with versions as strings wantPkgs - sub(^([^ ]+).*, \\1, Rcmdr.Suggests) havePkgs - installed.packages()[, Package] wantPkgs - wantPkgs[!(wantPkgs %in% havePkgs)] install.packages(wantPkgs) The Rcmdr maintains a list of its dependencies, so it already does something similar to this, but I like your version better because it queries the Description file directly. I can't really expect a user to issue a command like this, so I suppose that the best solution is, as at present, to have the Rcmdr package do the checking and installation at start-up but to install with dep=FALSE. Thanks, John + seth -- Seth Falcon | @sfalcon | http://userprimary.net/user __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Re: [Rd] Rcmdr package dependencies
John Fox wrote: Dear Seth, -Original Message- From: Seth Falcon [mailto:s...@userprimary.net] Sent: September-22-09 5:13 PM To: Uwe Ligges Cc: John Fox; r-devel@r-project.org Subject: Re: [Rd] Rcmdr package dependencies * On 2009-09-22 at 20:16 +0200 Uwe Ligges wrote: no, this is not possible. Consider your package A (or Rcmdr) suggests B that suggests C. Then A::foo uses the function B::bar which only works if C::dep is present. B works essentially without C but it requires C just to make bar work. Then this means your A::foo won't work if C is not installed and you won't get it with the setup mentioned above. In summary, I fear what you want might work well *now* (by chance), but it does not work in general. In general, one would expect a given package to function when its suggested packages are not available. As such, it seems quite reasonable to install a package, its Depends, Imports, and Suggests, but not install Suggests recursively. I think you could achieve such an installation using two calls to install.packages: install.packages(Rcmdr) Rcmdr.Suggests - strsplit(packageDescription(Rcmdr)$Suggests, ,\\s?)[[1]] ## need extra cleanup since packageDescription(blah)$Suggests ## Returns package names with versions as strings wantPkgs - sub(^([^ ]+).*, \\1, Rcmdr.Suggests) Nice suggestion, indeed! I think there is some code in package tools that help to resolve these issues even more convenient: wantPkgs - package.dependencies(available.packages()[Rcmdr,], depLevel = Suggests)[[Rcmdr]][,1] so you do not need to have Rcmdr already installed and can rely on the R internal code that can strip all that version information. Best wishes, Uwe havePkgs - installed.packages()[, Package] wantPkgs - wantPkgs[!(wantPkgs %in% havePkgs)] install.packages(wantPkgs) The Rcmdr maintains a list of its dependencies, so it already does something similar to this, but I like your version better because it queries the Description file directly. I can't really expect a user to issue a command like this, so I suppose that the best solution is, as at present, to have the Rcmdr package do the checking and installation at start-up but to install with dep=FALSE. Thanks, John + seth -- Seth Falcon | @sfalcon | http://userprimary.net/user __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
