r - Error: Maximal number of DLLs reached

Question

I'm writing an R package which depends upon many other packages. When I load too many packages into the session I frequently got this error:

Error in dyn.load(file, DLLpath = DLLpath, ...) : 
  unable to load shared object '/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.2/Resources/library/proxy/libs/proxy.so':
  `maximal number of DLLs reached...

This post Exceeded maximum number of DLLs in R pointed out that the issue is with the Rdynload.c of the base R code: #define MAX_NUM_DLLS 100

Is there any way to bypass this issue except modifying and building from source?

Answer 1

As of R 3.4, you can set a different max number of DLLs using and environmental variable R_MAX_NUM_DLLS. From the release notes:

The maximum number of DLLs that can be loaded into R e.g. via dyn.load() can now be increased by setting the environment variable R_MAX_NUM_DLLS before starting R.