[Rd] Withdrawing SaveImage

Gabor Grothendieck
Thu, 18 Oct 2007 01:45:43 -0000

I noticed this under R 2.7.0 NEWS:

    o	In package installation, SaveImage: yes is defunct and
	lazyloading is attempted instead.

I think its premature to make SaveImage defunct especially when:

1. there is a bug that would be triggered in some packages
by automatically using LazyLoad instead of SaveImage:

https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2007-October/047118.html

2. only last year it was stated on R-devel that there was "no intention to
withdraw SaveImage: yes"

http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/devel/06/02/4025.html

Having "SaveImage: yes" automatically invoke LazyLoad is really
tantamount to withdrawing it.

At the very least making SaveImage defunct should be postponed until the
bug in #1 is fixed and a period of time has elapsed during which both
SaveImage and LazyLoad are available without that bug so that packages
affected can gradually move over and have the ability to move back to
SaveImage if the move uncovers more R bugs related to this.