From sfalcon at fhcrc.org  Tue May  1 23:59:43 2007
From: sfalcon at fhcrc.org (Seth Falcon)
Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 14:59:43 -0700
Subject: [Rd] Embedding R and registering routines
In-Reply-To: <5596EE23-E8F8-440C-BAD8-129C48352ACD@r-project.org> (Simon
	Urbanek's message of "Tue, 1 May 2007 16:58:02 -0400")
References: <46375AC9.5000201@vanderbilt.edu>
	<20070501175605.GS30532@wald.ucdavis.edu>
	<B564A90A-FF27-4BEA-B0BC-D60853F71782@r-project.org>
	<20070501202445.GA1806@wald.ucdavis.edu>
	<5596EE23-E8F8-440C-BAD8-129C48352ACD@r-project.org>
Message-ID: <m2slaggq7k.fsf@ziti.local>

Simon Urbanek <simon.urbanek at r-project.org> writes:

> Duncan,
>
> are you going to take care of this? I have a quick solution for R- 
> devel that adds a special entry if requested.
>
> I'm not quite convinced that we need as much flexibility as adding  
> arbitrary DllInfos, because the embedding application is a really  
> special concept (everything else is dynamically loaded except for the  
> application). In a sense "base" does that for non-embedded R and the  
> distinction is that it doesn't allow dynamic lookup. I don't think  
> adding arbitrary DllInfos is wise, because we would have to expose  
> DLL handles etc. - do we really want to do that? And as for adding  
> NULL-handle DLLInfos, there is only one legitimate use and that is  
> the embedding application, so anything else looks more like abuse to  
> me... (just lazy solution to not have to determine the dll). Also the  
> embedded DllInfo cannot be unloaded by design, so it doesn't need  
> anything complicated...

Perhaps I'm not understanding the issues at hand, but I think there
are other use cases for a mechanism accessible to package developers
to dynamically register routines.  Just as R can load packages to make
new routines available, I don't see why an R package should not be
able to provide an analogous plugin mechanism of its own.

+ seth

-- 
Seth Falcon | Computational Biology | Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
http://bioconductor.org



[Rd] Embedding R and registering routines
Seth Falcon