R devel - Aug 2006 - S4 changes - sp fails

Under R version 2.4.0 (2006-08-30 r39024), sp fails CMD check following
the latest changes in methods.

The failures are in running examples and occur in CMD check:
> data(state)
> dd2dms(state.center$x)
Error in function (classes, fdef, mtable)  : 
        unable to find an inherited method for function "initialize",
for
signature "integer"

Offending code:

	deg <- as(floor(dd), "integer") 

After replacing by as.integer(floor(dd)), it fails on the local class 
definition:
> dd2dms(state.center$x)
Error in function (classes, fdef, mtable)  : 
        unable to find an inherited method for function "initialize",
for
signature "DMS"

Installing sp, example("DMS-class") runs successfully interactively 
(other examples do too).

The methods package is declared as Depends: in DESCRIPTION, and
import(methods) in NAMESPACE; 

.onLoad <- function(lib, pkg) require(methods) is in the first R source 
file in Collate: order.

Should the methods package be being invoked in some other way, is there a 
reason why the installed package appears to run examples successfully that 
fail under CMD check?

Roger

-- 
Roger Bivand
Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of
Economics and Business Administration, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen,
Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 95 43
e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no

Roger,

I had managed to run R CMD check on sp successfully on r39021 and r39043 
(current) in my nightly checks.  (There are a couple of tests where the 
show/print method is not being invoked, but that is not new.)

All I can suggest is to install R from scratch (make distclean), and then 
reinstall all relevant packages.  At a guess, your interactive use and R 
CMD check are picking up different libraries.

There are around a dozen S4-using packages on CRAN that are currently 
failing their checks: some look like newly-discovered bugs but some look 
like problems in S4 dispatch (even of S3 dispatch for S3 generics turned 
into S4 generics).  More are producing apparently incorrect warnings.

Brian


On Thu, 31 Aug 2006, Roger Bivand wrote:
> Under R version 2.4.0 (2006-08-30 r39024), sp fails CMD check following
> the latest changes in methods.
> 
> The failures are in running examples and occur in CMD check:
> 
> > data(state)
> > dd2dms(state.center$x)
> Error in function (classes, fdef, mtable)  : 
>         unable to find an inherited method for function
"initialize", for
> signature "integer"
> 
> Offending code:
> 
> 	deg <- as(floor(dd), "integer") 
> 
> After replacing by as.integer(floor(dd)), it fails on the local class 
> definition:
> 
> > dd2dms(state.center$x)
> Error in function (classes, fdef, mtable)  : 
>         unable to find an inherited method for function
"initialize", for
> signature "DMS"
> 
> Installing sp, example("DMS-class") runs successfully
interactively
> (other examples do too).
> 
> The methods package is declared as Depends: in DESCRIPTION, and
> import(methods) in NAMESPACE; 
> 
> .onLoad <- function(lib, pkg) require(methods) is in the first R source 
> file in Collate: order.
> 
> Should the methods package be being invoked in some other way, is there a 
> reason why the installed package appears to run examples successfully that 
> fail under CMD check?
> 
> Roger
> 
> 
-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595