Package 'nobcom'

How to use the nobcom package

Description

R's byte-compiler can occasionally cause problems for other packages— offarray v1.0.x is an example. So you might need to turn off the byte compiler before loading such a package. You can do that by adding

"Imports: nobcom" to the DESCRIPTION. That avoids having to get the user to remember to do something special before library (or, worse, before an "invisible" automatic package load occurs). Turning off the byte-compiler is harmless, with (in my experience) minimal speed penalty. Of course, in the long run I suppose one "should" try to write code that does not offend the byte-compiler— but (i) I never asked for the byte-compiler, and (ii) "in the long run we are all dead" (JM Keynes).

The user will never directly load the nobcom package, nor run any function in it. All the work is done by nobcom:::.onLoad, which runs automatically when nobcom is loaded. The details are a bit tricky; best to look at the code. The point of making nobcom into a package, is that "Imports" to another package are loaded (I hope) before that package is, so there is no opportunity (I hope) for the byte-compiler to do its dirty work; if you wait until the other package's .onLoad, or try to set a "load hook" (?setHook) it's too late.

To prevent this behaviour— ie to leave the byte-compiler unaffected— set the environment variable R_IGNORE_NOBCOM to any non-empty string before loading "your" package. That envar is checked during the exection of nobcom:::.onLoad.

That's all, folks!

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