Should I write `.registration = true` for an "external" DLL in a R package?

Question

When I do a package including some C code or using Rcpp, I type the roxygen code:

#' @useDynLib TheDLL, .registration=true

I did a package in which I included some DLLs created with Haskell, that I put in the inst/libs folder. I didn't type .registration=true in the roxygen code and the package works fine. Should I type it nevertheless? If so, what is the role of .registration=true?

Answer 1

I think you almost certainly shouldn't use it in a general-purpose DLL, but if the DLL was written specifically for R, maybe you should. It indicates that the dll calls R_registerRoutines from its R_init_DLLNAME function, so entry points can be saved into variables. For example, you might have a function named "foo". You can call it using

.Call("foo", ...)

without registering it, and R will need to search symbol tables for it at run time. Or you can register it and call it as

.Call(foo, ...)

and the search is unnecessary. This is discussed mainly in section 5.4.2 of "Writing R Extensions". I believe that if you specify .registration=true then R will use the registration information to find entry points, otherwise it needs to search through all the exports of the DLL, which is probably slower.