R devel - Sep 2013 - directives to explicitely exclude objects from import into namespaces

Hi,

recently R CMD check --as-cran has noticed some more issues with
package namespace imports with the recommended remedy to
use importFrom() and friends.

In my case, there was only a conflict restricted to some few imports,
while I would prefer to still import all the non-conflicting objects,
methods, and classes of the respective package namespace.

So would it be possible to have some new directives along the lines

import(<pkg>) ## importing the whole namespace of <pkg> in a first
step
notimportFrom(<pkg>, <obj1>, <obj2>,....)
           ##  exclude <obj1>, <obj2>, ... again from the previous
namespace import
           ## and, similarly,
notimportMethodsFrom(<pkg>, <meth1>, <meth2>,....)
notimportClassesFrom(<pkg>, <cls1>, <cls2>,....)

in the NAMESPACE file?

Otherwise the list of object, methods, classes to be explicitely imported
(in my case) got very long (and hence hard to maintain) -- much longer
than the list of items to be excluded from an import.

Or have I overseen some obvious, easier way to achieve this?

Best regards, Peter

-- 
Dr. habil. Peter Ruckdeschel, Abteilung Finanzmathematik, F3.17
Fraunhofer ITWM, Fraunhofer Platz 1, 67663 Kaiserslautern
Telefon:  +49 631/31600-4699   Fax:  +49 631/31600-5699
E-Mail :  peter.ruckdeschel at itwm.fraunhofer.de
http://www.itwm.fraunhofer.de/abteilungen/finanzmathematik/mitarbeiterinnen/mitarbeiter/dr-peter-ruckdeschel.html

On 13-09-06 4:54 PM, Dr. Peter Ruckdeschel wrote:
> Hi,
>
> recently R CMD check --as-cran has noticed some more issues with
> package namespace imports with the recommended remedy to
> use importFrom() and friends.
>
> In my case, there was only a conflict restricted to some few imports,
> while I would prefer to still import all the non-conflicting objects,
> methods, and classes of the respective package namespace.
>
> So would it be possible to have some new directives along the lines
>
> import(<pkg>) ## importing the whole namespace of <pkg> in a
first step
> notimportFrom(<pkg>, <obj1>, <obj2>,....)
>             ##  exclude <obj1>, <obj2>, ... again from the
previous namespace import
>             ## and, similarly,
> notimportMethodsFrom(<pkg>, <meth1>, <meth2>,....)
> notimportClassesFrom(<pkg>, <cls1>, <cls2>,....)
>
> in the NAMESPACE file?
>
> Otherwise the list of object, methods, classes to be explicitely imported
> (in my case) got very long (and hence hard to maintain) -- much longer
> than the list of items to be excluded from an import.
This doesn't make sense to me.  How could it be easier to maintain a 
list over which you don't have control instead of one over which you do 
have control?

Duncan Murdoch

>
> Or have I overseen some obvious, easier way to achieve this?
>
> Best regards, Peter
>