R devel - Jun 2011 - How to add a welcome message in Package development?

Dear all, it is my first post in R-devel list, and hope that this is
the right place to ask question related to package development.

I have created my first package in Windows through the usual route.
Now I want to add some ***Welcome message*** as soon as user loads my
package into their R console, using library() function. However I
could not figure out where and how should I add this functionality in
entire package development procedure, and the "Writing R Exts"
document also seem to be mum on this issue.

Can somebody help me how to add this functionality in the development
route of package. I believe this is possible as in many existing
packages that functionality is present.

Thanks,

On Jun 10, 2011, at 2:54 PM, Nipesh Bajaj wrote:
> Dear all, it is my first post in R-devel list, and hope that this is
> the right place to ask question related to package development.
> 
> I have created my first package in Windows through the usual route.
> Now I want to add some ***Welcome message*** as soon as user loads my
> package into their R console, using library() function. However I
> could not figure out where and how should I add this functionality in
> entire package development procedure, and the "Writing R Exts"
> document also seem to be mum on this issue.
> 
Personally, I find "welcome messages" extremely annoying, because if
you load a dependency chain of 20 packages and each has something silly to say,
you get pages of completely useless output (since you can't read all of them
anyway) that tend to interfere with automated scripts. Also anything people tend
to say in those is pertinent only once (when the user first sees the message) so
the message is pointless most of the time that it's shown. But that's
just my opinion.

That said, you can simply use cat() in .First.lib (if your packages has no
namespace) or .onAttach or .onLoad (if your packages has a namespace).

Cheers,
Simon

> Can somebody help me how to add this functionality in the development
> route of package. I believe this is possible as in many existing
> packages that functionality is present.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
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