R devel - Aug 2014 - Re R CMD check checking in development version of R

Dear list,

This is related to the change discussed in the thread "no visible binding
for global variables for data sets in a package".

I went to look at the Check results for one of my packages (analogue) on
CRAN: http://cran.r-project.org/web/checks/check_results_analogue.html

Under the r-devel build machines I'm seeing a lot of things like this:

    Stratiplot.default : axis.VarLabs: no visible global function
     definition for ?current.panel.limits?
    Stratiplot.default : axis.VarLabs: no visible global function
     definition for ?panel.axis?
    Stratiplot.default : axis.VarLabs: no visible global function
     definition for ?which.packet?
    Stratiplot.default : axis.VarLabs: no visible global function
     definition for ?axis.default?
    Stratiplot.default: no visible global function definition for ?xyplot?
    Stratiplot.default: no visible binding for global variable
     ?axis.default?
    initCurve: no visible global function definition for ?cca?
    initCurve: no visible global function definition for ?rda?
    oldDistance.default: no visible global function definition for
     ?vegdist?
    panel.Loess: no visible global function definition for
     ?trellis.par.get?
....
    panel.Stratiplot: no visible global function definition for
     ?panel.abline?
    plot3d.prcurve: no visible global function definition for ?rda?
    prcurve: no visible global function definition for ?rda?
    tran.default: no visible global function definition for ?wisconsin?
    tran.default: no visible global function definition for ?decostand?

I realise that I don't importFrom all of those functions in NAMESPACE -
I've missed some so this list is actually very handy. But also I Depend on
packages that provide some of the function complained about.

Is that the cause of these NOTEs? Is the expectation that if I am using a
function from a package, even a package that I have in Depends:, that I
have to explicitly declare these imports in NAMESPACE?

I'm just seeking a bit of clarification on what this new check aims to test
and what is the ideal solution in the view of R Core given this change to R
CMD check.

Thanks in advance

Gavin

-- 
Gavin Simpson, PhD

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

> Is that the cause of these NOTEs? Is the expectation that if I am using a
> function from a package, even a package that I have in Depends:, that I
> have to explicitly declare these imports in NAMESPACE?
Yes.

(Otherwise your package won't work if it's only attached and not
loaded. i.e. if someone does analogue::foo() only the imported
functions are available, not the functions in packages you depend on)

(And really you shouldn't have any packages in depends, they should
all be in imports)

Hadley


-- 
http://had.co.nz/