name clash of `as.character.dev_topic()` (package 'generic')

[lschneiderbauer]

Hi, I noticed that there seems to be a name clash w.r.t. the S3 method as.character.dev_topic()

#> Registered S3 method overwritten by 'butcher':
#>   method                 from    
#>   as.character.dev_topic generics

which occurs when both packages are loaded:

library(generics)
#> 
#> Attache Paket: 'generics'
#> Die folgenden Objekte sind maskiert von 'package:base':
#> 
#>     as.difftime, as.factor, as.ordered, intersect, is.element, setdiff,
#>     setequal, union
library(butcher)
#> Warning: Paket 'butcher' wurde unter R Version 4.4.3 erstellt
#> Registered S3 method overwritten by 'butcher':
#>   method                 from    
#>   as.character.dev_topic generics

^{Created on 2025-05-12 with reprex v2.1.1}

In my case it appears because a package of mine imports both packages. When loading the package this message appears.

Is this something we should worry about, or this intentional, and this message can be ignored?

[juliasilge]

I am not totally sure what's going on here, honestly. We have this, in the file where that method is defined:

butcher/R/docs.R

Line 1 in 594035c

# These functions are copied from [https://github.com/r-lib/generics/blob/main/R/docs.R] for dynamic documentation.

This predates my own work/maintenance on this package. I will ask around and see if we can find out what is going on here!

[juliasilge]

That file was added here:

bc58dc3#diff-23c5c5d45abcf322335ec8bd2f13b6a29e59db32451255f108d29771ab638cdd

For now, feel free to ignore this message (I don't think it will hurt anything for you) but we will see if we need to keep this code around in butcher.