Question

Some background:

I have to use function HMR from package HMR a lot. Unfortunately, this function is very slow. (HMR is essentially a fitting function, which is designed to be as robust as possible, which is one reason for the lack of efficiency.) Function HMR calls function HMR::.HMR.fit1, which does the actual fitting.
Using Rprof I know that the main problem regarding efficiency is the use of lsfit, which gets called a lot. Therefore, I modified the code of .HMR.fit1 to call the C function used by lsfit directly without all the overhead of lsfit, which should result in a substantial speed gain.

Now I would like to substitute HMR::.HMR.fit1 with my modified function and test HMR if it gives the same results and how much speed I gain.

I tried to do this:

mod.fun <- function(<many args>) {
 <a lot of code>
}
environment(mod.fun) <- environment(.HMR.fit1)
.HMR.fit1 <- mod.fun 

However, HMR::.HMR.fit1 is not changed by doing this and apparently HMR::HMR does not use my modified fitting function. Is there a way to achieve what I want without building the package from source, which I cannot do due to user rights restrictions on my (windows) computer?

Right now, my solution would be to copy the code of HMR::HMR, but I hope there is a more convenient solution.

Answer 1

Try

?assignInNamespace

to replace .HMR.fit1 in the HMR package with your version.

Possible duplicate of :

How do I override a non-visible function in the package namespace?