From krcoombes at mdacc.tmc.edu  Thu Sep  3 19:38:28 2009
From: krcoombes at mdacc.tmc.edu (Kevin R. Coombes)
Date: Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:38:28 -0500
Subject: [Rd] Suggestion: Allow packages to add additional information
 to sessionInfo()
In-Reply-To: <59d7961d0909031027t5ec2d0f5u707a140dcd3d6474@mail.gmail.com>
References: <59d7961d0909031005p676b5fe8m4878c1149c22dad6@mail.gmail.com>
	<971536df0909031016t2658cc1dl98c11d597cb3066c@mail.gmail.com>
	<59d7961d0909031027t5ec2d0f5u707a140dcd3d6474@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4A9FFF14.8010800@mdacc.tmc.edu>

[1] I agree that sessionInfo() can be taken further.
[2] I even more strongly agree that it would be a bad idea to allow 
packages to add features that cause the base sessionInfo() function to fail.

Why not add an extra function called something like 
"packageSessionInfo()" that would provide the desired hooks but keep 
them from breaking the base functionality?

(Of course, this ignores the possibility that someone could create a 
package within which they make sessionInfo into a generic and cause 
things to break through the S4 class mechanism...)

    Kevin

Henrik Bengtsson wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 10:16 AM, Gabor
> Grothendieck<ggrothendieck at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> The danger is that it could introduce bugs into the process
>> of reporting bugs.
>>     
>
> If you mean that sessionInfo() will result in an error, that is easily
> solved by a tryCatch() statement.  Timeouts are harder.  One can also
> consider providing an sessionInfo(..., extras=TRUE) option.
>
> The purpose is to save the maintainer (and those who try to help
> troubleshooting) time.  There are tons of time spend on sending follow
> up requests on basic things.  We took a great leap when introducing
> sessionInfo() and think we can take it further.
>
> /Henrik
>
>   
>> On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 1:05 PM, Henrik Bengtsson<hb at stat.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>>     
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> sessionInfo() has been proven really useful, but you still often have
>>> to ask for additional information in order to help troubleshooting.
>>> For instance, for troubleshooting the aroma.affymetrix, it is very
>>> helpful to know what the current working directory is, for other
>>> packages certain system environment variables might be useful and so
>>> on.
>>>
>>> One solution could be to provide support for hook functions of
>>> sessionInfo(), which package then can register and append to the
>>> 'sessionInfo' list structure.  Does this make sense?
>>>
>>> /Henrik
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>>
>>>       
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>



[Rd] Suggestion: Allow packages to add additional information to sessionInfo()
Kevin R. Coombes