add sessionInfo() option to "save"

[Robert M. Flight]

Hi All,

I was wondering if there would be any interest in adding an option to the
"save" function in R that I think would be useful. I was thinking that it
might be useful to have an option that would generate a ".sessionInfo"
variable that contains the output of "sessionInfo()", and adds it to the
list of objects to be saved. This way, whenever an RData object is loaded,
all the information about the R version, and attached packages present
would be available for query.

I know I have been bitten by the problem of generating results using
different versions of packages and different versions of R. I know that
this is partly the idea behind Sweave (and other report generation
measures), and perhaps I am at fault for not keeping better track of these
types of things, but this seems like it would be useful to a lot of other
people besides just me.

Thoughts?

-Robert

Robert M. Flight, Ph.D.
University of Louisville Bioinformatics Laboratory
University of Louisville
Louisville, KY

PH 502-852-1809 (HSC)
PH 502-852-0467 (Belknap)
EM [hidden email]
EM [hidden email]
robertmflight.blogspot.com
bioinformatics.louisville.edu/lab
github.com/rmflight/general/wiki

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..." - Isaac
Asimov

        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]

______________________________________________
[hidden email] mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

[Yihui Xie-2]

My 2 cents in the last section of this page: http://yihui.name/knitr/demo/cache/

You can set something like opts_knit$set(cache.extra =
sapply(c('boot', 'ggplot2', 'splines'), packageVersion)) so that each
time these packages are updated, the cache of your document will be
rebuilt.

That is not exactly the same as what you mentioned, however, with the
knitr package, you can easily leave a chunk like this in your Rnw
document:

<<sessioninfo, cache=TRUE, include=FALSE>>=
.sessioninfo = sessionInfo()
@

and the variable .sesioninfo will be saved to the cache database,
which you can load into your R session by lazyLoad() and examine it. I
think it might be better than manually save() objects.

Regards,
Yihui
--
Yihui Xie <[hidden email]>
Phone: [phone] Web: http://yihui.name
Department of Statistics, Iowa State University
2215 Snedecor Hall, Ames, IA


On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 11:09 AM, Robert M. Flight <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I was wondering if there would be any interest in adding an option to the
> "save" function in R that I think would be useful. I was thinking that it
> might be useful to have an option that would generate a ".sessionInfo"
> variable that contains the output of "sessionInfo()", and adds it to the
> list of objects to be saved. This way, whenever an RData object is loaded,
> all the information about the R version, and attached packages present
> would be available for query.
>
> I know I have been bitten by the problem of generating results using
> different versions of packages and different versions of R. I know that
> this is partly the idea behind Sweave (and other report generation
> measures), and perhaps I am at fault for not keeping better track of these
> types of things, but this seems like it would be useful to a lot of other
> people besides just me.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> -Robert
>
> Robert M. Flight, Ph.D.
> University of Louisville Bioinformatics Laboratory
> University of Louisville
> Louisville, KY
>
> PH 502-852-1809 (HSC)
> PH 502-852-0467 (Belknap)
> EM [hidden email]
> EM [hidden email]
> robertmflight.blogspot.com
> bioinformatics.louisville.edu/lab
> github.com/rmflight/general/wiki
>
> The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
> discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..." - Isaac
> Asimov
>
>        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> ______________________________________________
> [hidden email] mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

______________________________________________
[hidden email] mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel