Managing imports and exports

The package NAMESPACE is one of the most confusing parts of building a package. roxygen2 aims to make it as easy as possible to build a package that is a well-behaved member of the R ecosystem. This is a little frustrating at first, but soon becomes second-nature.

Exports

In order for your users to use a function¹ from your package, you must export it. In most cases, you can just use the @export tag, and roxygen2 will automatically figure out which NAMESPACE directive (i.e. export(), S3method(), exportClasses(), or exportMethods()) you need.

For details and examples of exporting functions, and S3, S4, and S7 classes/generics/methods, see the corresponding vignettes:

vignette("rd-functions") for regular functions.
vignette("rd-S3") for S3 generics and methods, including delayed registration with @exportS3Method.
vignette("rd-S4") for S4 generics, classes, and methods.
S7 methods are registered at load time, not through NAMESPACE; see vignette("rd-S7").

Datasets should never be exported as they are not found in NAMESPACE. Learn more in vignette("rd-datasets").

Manual exports

If @export does not automatically generate the correct NAMESPACE directive, you can use one of the tags below to exercise greater control:

@export foo generates export(foo)
@exportS3Method generic method generates S3method(generic, method)
@exportClass foo generates exportClasses(foo)
@exportMethod foo generates exportMethods(foo)
@exportPattern foo generates exportPattern(foo)

For even more specialised cases you can use @rawNamespace code which inserts code literally into the NAMESPACE. This is useful if you need a conditional import or export, e.g.

# From dplyr:
#' @rawNamespace import(vctrs, except = data_frame)
NULL
#> NULL

# From backports:
#' @rawNamespace if (getRversion() < "4.0.0") export(stopifnot)
NULL
#> NULL

If you need to automate this, @evalNamespace fun() will evaluate fun() in your package environment and insert the results into NAMESPACE. Note that because evalNamespace() is run in the package environment, it can only generate exports, not imports.

Imports

The NAMESPACE also controls which functions from other packages are made available to your package.

Functions

If you are using just a few functions from another package, we recommending adding the package to the Imports: field of the DESCRIPTION file and calling the functions explicitly using ::, e.g., pkg::fun().

my_function <- function(x, y) {
  pkg::fun(x) * y
}

If the repetition of the package name becomes annoying you can @importFrom and drop the :::

#' @importFrom pkg fun
my_function <- function(x, y) {
  fun(x) * y
}

Imports affect every function in a package, so it’s common to collect them in a central place, like {packagename}-package.R. This is automated by usethis::use_import_from().

#' @importFrom pkg fun1 fun2
#' @importFrom pkg2 fun3
#' @importFrom pkg3 fun4
NULL
#> NULL

Note the use of NULL here: you must provide something for roxygen2 to document, so we use NULL as placeholder.

It is possible, but not generally recommended to import all functions from a package with @import package. This is risky if you import functions from more than one package, because while it might be ok today, in the future the packages might end up with a function having the same name, and your users will get a warning every time your package is loaded.

S3

S3 generics are just functions, so the same rules for functions apply. S3 methods always accompany the generic, so as long as you can access the generic, the methods will also be available. In other words, you don’t need to do anything to import an S3 method.

S4

To use classes defined in another package, place @importClassesFrom package ClassA ClassB ... next to the classes that inherit from the imported classes, or next to the methods that implement a generic for the imported classes.
To use generics defined in another package, place @importMethodsFrom package GenericA GenericB ... next to the methods that use the imported generics.

Compiled code

To import compiled code from another package, use @useDynLib

@useDynLib package imports all compiled functions.
@useDynLib package routinea routineb imports selected compiled functions.
Any @useDynLib specification containing a comma, e.g. @useDynLib mypackage, .registration = TRUE will be inserted as is into the the NAMESPACE, e.g. useDynLib(mypackage, .registration = TRUE)

Including S3/S4/S7 generics and constructors.↩︎