R can't find function even though I installed its package. .nlmP (from geoR)

Question

I write

install.packages("geoR")
library(geoR)
.nlmP(f,parameters)

and it returns

Error: could not find function ".nlmP"

What to do?

I did what the first answer suggest, then it said

Error in get(".ind.prof.phi", pos = 1) : object '.ind.prof.phi' not found

Answer 1

You must use geoR:::.nlmP(), because nlmP is not in the exported NAMESPACE for geoR.

Answer 2

Actually I think we're quick to judge here.

https://github.com/cran/geoR/blob/a516861572ad6be3c2452a7b187af946130cf439/inst/CHANGES

The CHANGES file specifies that .nlmP was supposed to be exported in 1.7-2 and looking through the history it was. It wasn't until 1.7-4 or 1.7-5 that it got commented out in the NAMESPACE file. There is a note "changes to fix issues on CRAN reported errors/warnings regarding namespaces and foreign calls" so it might have been a namespace issue but it does seem the author intended for the function to be exported.

It might make sense to contact the maintainer about this.

If you absolutely need this function you could install the latest version that had it exported.

library(devtools)
install_github("cran/geoR", ref = "74feb80")

Note that you won't have any of the changes made to the package after that commit.

With that said I'm fairly sure there are better packages for contstrained non-linear optimization so hopefully somebody comes along with a better answer to get at the actual root of your problem.