Loading {logistf} breaks MCMCglmm()

Loading the package logistf breaks MCMCglmm(). Unloading logistf before running the command doesn't remove the error.

Why is that? Is there a way to solve this?

Works

library(MCMCglmm)
#> Loading required package: Matrix
#> Loading required package: coda
#> Loading required package: ape

data(PlodiaPO)
MCMCglmm(PO ~ plate, data = PlodiaPO)
#> 
#>                        MCMC iteration = 0
#> 
#>                        MCMC iteration = 1000
#> 
#>                        MCMC iteration = 2000
#> 
#>                        MCMC iteration = 3000
#> 
[...]
#> attr(,"class")
#> [1] "MCMCglmm"

^{Created on 2022-06-07 by the reprex package (v2.0.1)}

Doesn't work

library(logistf)
library(MCMCglmm)
#> Loading required package: Matrix
#> Loading required package: coda
#> Loading required package: ape

data(PlodiaPO)
MCMCglmm(PO ~ plate, data = PlodiaPO)
#> Error in terms.formula(formula, data = data): invalid term in model formula

unloadNamespace("logistf")
MCMCglmm(PO ~ plate, data = PlodiaPO)
#> Error in terms.formula(formula, data = data): invalid term in model formula

^{Created on 2022-06-07 by the reprex package (v2.0.1)}

Solution

After some research i found that the problem not from logistf but it comes from the imported package formula.tools to reproduce the error try :

library(formula.tools)
#>formula.tools-1.7.1 - Copyright © 2022 Decision Patterns
library(MCMCglmm)
#> Loading required package: Matrix
#> Loading required package: coda
#> Loading required package: ape

data(PlodiaPO)
MCMCglmm(PO ~ plate, data = PlodiaPO)

#> Error in terms.formula(formula, data = data) : 
  invalid term in model formula

and this issue known for formula.tools see Weird package dependency introduces error

The solution detailed in this issue is:

fork fomula.tools repo
(remove this line)[https://github.com/decisionpatterns/formula.tools/blob/45b6654e4d8570cbaf1e2fd527652471202d97ad/NAMESPACE#L3]
install_github from your repo

run as.character.formula = function(x) as.character.default(x) right after loading formula.tools. That might break code using as.character.formula though (but not sure).

Thanks for this question