From seth at userprimary.net  Fri Mar 19 21:44:42 2010
From: seth at userprimary.net (Seth Falcon)
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:44:42 -0700
Subject: [Rd] DESCRIPTION: Imports: assertion of version?
In-Reply-To: <59d7961d1003190613gc05806v845dc1a4a99aaf57@mail.gmail.com>
References: <59d7961d1003190613gc05806v845dc1a4a99aaf57@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4BA3E23A.7070807@userprimary.net>

On 3/19/10 6:13 AM, Henrik Bengtsson wrote:
> Hi,
>
> from 'Writing R Extensions' [R version 2.11.0 Under development
> (unstable) (2010-03-16 r51290)] one can read:
>
> "The optional `Imports' field lists packages whose name spaces are
> imported from but which do not need to be attached. [...] Versions can
> be specified, but will not be checked when the namespace is loaded."
>
> Is it a design decision that version specifications are not asserted
> for packages under "Imports:", or is it a "lack of implementation"?
> If a design decision, under what use cases do you want to specify the
> version but not validating it?  Is it simply because there is no
> mechanism for tracking the origin/package of the code importing the
> other package, and hence we cannot know which DESCRIPTION file to
> check against?

I'm not aware of any use case in which the current lack of checking is a 
"feature".  I would be interested in a patch (with testing) for this.

+ seth

-- 
Seth Falcon | @sfalcon | http://userprimary.net/



[Rd] DESCRIPTION: Imports: assertion of version?
Seth Falcon