Hooks for loading R packages

The setHook function can be used to add hooks when loading (or unloading) R packages. For example, to update my previous post about replacing the yesno function in devtools can be improved by using hooks. The version in the original post loaded devtools in every R session. By using hooks, the change to yesno takes place anytime devtools is loaded, but does not require devtools loaded in every R session.

setHook(packageEvent("devtools", "onLoad"), {
  yesno <- function(...) {
    cat(paste0(..., collapse = ""))
    utils::menu(c("Yes", "No")) != 1
  }
  utils::assignInNamespace("yesno", yesno, "devtools")
  rm(yesno)
})

To improve this, we can first make sure devtools is actually installed on the system.

pkg <- utils::installed.packages()[, "Package"]

# Better yesno function from devtools
if (isTRUE("devtools" %in% pkg)) {
  setHook(packageEvent("devtools", "onLoad"), {
    yesno <- function(...) {
      cat(paste0(..., collapse = ""))
      utils::menu(c("Yes", "No")) != 1
    }
    utils::assignInNamespace("yesno", yesno, "devtools")
    rm(yesno)
  })
}
rm(pkg)

Make sure to rm the objects otherwise they’ll exist in the environment when you start a fresh R session.

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0