I am a newbie package builder who successfully built a "Hello world" package but am now having trouble building a package with S4 functionality. I thought I would start by building a package consisting of just the first example under the setGeneric help page in a "fresh" 2.10.0 (windows) console (methods loaded at startup). The example: ## create a new generic function, with a default method props <- function(object) attributes(object) setGeneric("props") I executed those commands, then package.skeleton("props", list="props", namespace=TRUE) I edited the help files, put "Depends: methods" into the DESCRIPTION file, and put "export(props)" as the only line in the NAMESPACE file. When I ran "Rcmd check" on the "props" folder, it hit an error: * checking whether package 'props' can be installed ... ERROR Installation failed. The 00install.out file said it found an unexpected '<' in the props.R file. I guessed it was due to the argument 'default = <S4 object of class structure("MethodsList", package "methods")>' in the structure definition of props in props.R. When I deleted that argument and re-checked the "props" folder, it hit a new error: *checking for missing documentation entries ... ERROR Error in FUN("props"[[1L]], ...) : Now I am guessing that there's something about my defaults -- related to setGeneric -- that won't allow this simple S4 example to build. Any guidance would be appreciated. Thank you. Dan Murphy [[alternative HTML version deleted]]