R devel - Jun 2013 - Policy/best practices on renaming functions in packages

R-developers:

I'm beginning to work on a manuscript for a set of functions I
developed for a package I have on CRAN (spatial.tools), and I'd like
to rename a function in my package to give a better idea of what it
does prior to manuscript submission -- is there a "safe" way to do a
backwards-compatible rename of a function within a CRAN package (so
functions that rely on the original name aren't broken)?  Is it as
simple as:

new_name <- old_name <- function(yadda)
{

}

In general, I'd just leave it as is, but the old name of the function
was a reference to an existing function in another package that it no
longer has any resemblance to.

Thanks!

--j

--
Jonathan A. Greenberg, PhD
Assistant Professor
Global Environmental Analysis and Remote Sensing (GEARS) Laboratory
Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
607 South Mathews Avenue, MC 150
Urbana, IL 61801
Phone: 217-300-1924
http://www.geog.illinois.edu/~jgrn/
AIM: jgrn307, MSN: jgrn307 at hotmail.com, Gchat: jgrn307, Skype: jgrn3007

On 10 June 2013 17:23, Jonathan Greenberg <jgrn at illinois.edu>
wrote:
> R-developers:
>
> I'm beginning to work on a manuscript for a set of functions I
> developed for a package I have on CRAN (spatial.tools), and I'd like
> to rename a function in my package to give a better idea of what it
> does prior to manuscript submission -- is there a "safe" way to
do a
> backwards-compatible rename of a function within a CRAN package (so
> functions that rely on the original name aren't broken)?  Is it as
> simple as:
>
> new_name <- old_name <- function(yadda)
> {
>
> }
>
> In general, I'd just leave it as is, but the old name of the function
> was a reference to an existing function in another package that it no
> longer has any resemblance to.
I think that the recommended way is to start with base::.Deprecated
and then more on with base::Defunct.

This guide, http://bioconductor.org/developers/how-to/deprecation/,
although from the Bioconductor project, might be helpful.

Best wishes,

Laurent
> Thanks!
>
> --j
>
> --
> Jonathan A. Greenberg, PhD
> Assistant Professor
> Global Environmental Analysis and Remote Sensing (GEARS) Laboratory
> Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science
> University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
> 607 South Mathews Avenue, MC 150
> Urbana, IL 61801
> Phone: 217-300-1924
> http://www.geog.illinois.edu/~jgrn/
> AIM: jgrn307, MSN: jgrn307 at hotmail.com, Gchat: jgrn307, Skype: jgrn3007
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel


--
[ Laurent Gatto | slashhome.be ]