v0.5 Julia removed fallback transpose and alternative does not work for DataFrames

[tlnagy]

Since JuliaLang/LinearAlgebra.jl#257 went through, doing something like the following no longer works:

julia> versioninfo()
Julia Version 0.5.0-rc0+0
Commit 0030eec* (2016-07-26 20:22 UTC)
Platform Info:
  System: Darwin (x86_64-apple-darwin15.4.0)
  CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4850HQ CPU @ 2.30GHz
  WORD_SIZE: 64
  BLAS: libopenblas (USE64BITINT DYNAMIC_ARCH NO_AFFINITY Haswell)
  LAPACK: libopenblas64_
  LIBM: libopenlibm
  LLVM: libLLVM-3.7.1 (ORCJIT, haswell)

julia> Pkg.checkout("DataFrames")
INFO: Checking out DataFrames master...
INFO: Pulling DataFrames latest master...
INFO: No packages to install, update or remove

julia> using DataFrames
INFO: Recompiling stale cache file /Users/tamasnagy/.julia/lib/v0.5/DataFrames.ji for module DataFrames.

julia> a = DataFrame(rand(10,3))
10×3 DataFrames.DataFrame
│ Row │ x1        │ x2       │ x3        │
├─────┼───────────┼──────────┼───────────┤
│ 1   │ 0.104009  │ 0.288695 │ 0.0858412 │
│ 2   │ 0.161572  │ 0.535473 │ 0.7343    │
│ 3   │ 0.905977  │ 0.541049 │ 0.675175  │
│ 4   │ 0.459802  │ 0.19878  │ 0.049148  │
│ 5   │ 0.469835  │ 0.029731 │ 0.258061  │
│ 6   │ 0.0575359 │ 0.494867 │ 0.808683  │
│ 7   │ 0.327723  │ 0.225381 │ 0.14324   │
│ 8   │ 0.628949  │ 0.726375 │ 0.831952  │
│ 9   │ 0.883181  │ 0.808421 │ 0.803585  │
│ 10  │ 0.927315  │ 0.777683 │ 0.287885  │

julia> a'
WARNING: the no-op `transpose` fallback is deprecated, and no more specific `transpose` method for DataFrames.DataFrame exists. Consider `permutedims(x, [2, 1])` or writing a specific `transpose(x::DataFrames.DataFrame)` method if appropriate.
 in depwarn(::String, ::Symbol) at ./deprecated.jl:64
 in transpose(::DataFrames.DataFrame) at ./deprecated.jl:771
 in ctranspose(::DataFrames.DataFrame) at ./operators.jl:300
 in eval(::Module, ::Any) at ./boot.jl:234
 in eval_user_input(::Any, ::Base.REPL.REPLBackend) at ./REPL.jl:62
 in macro expansion at ./REPL.jl:92 [inlined]
 in (::Base.REPL.##3#4{Base.REPL.REPLBackend})() at ./event.jl:46
while loading no file, in expression starting on line 0
10×3 DataFrames.DataFrame
│ Row │ x1        │ x2       │ x3        │
├─────┼───────────┼──────────┼───────────┤
│ 1   │ 0.104009  │ 0.288695 │ 0.0858412 │
│ 2   │ 0.161572  │ 0.535473 │ 0.7343    │
│ 3   │ 0.905977  │ 0.541049 │ 0.675175  │
│ 4   │ 0.459802  │ 0.19878  │ 0.049148  │
│ 5   │ 0.469835  │ 0.029731 │ 0.258061  │
│ 6   │ 0.0575359 │ 0.494867 │ 0.808683  │
│ 7   │ 0.327723  │ 0.225381 │ 0.14324   │
│ 8   │ 0.628949  │ 0.726375 │ 0.831952  │
│ 9   │ 0.883181  │ 0.808421 │ 0.803585  │
│ 10  │ 0.927315  │ 0.777683 │ 0.287885  │

The suggested permutedims(a, [2, 1]) does not work

julia> permutedims(a, [2,1])
ERROR: MethodError: no method matching permutedims(::DataFrames.DataFrame, ::Array{Int64,1})
Closest candidates are:
  permutedims(::Union{Base.ReshapedArray{T,N,A<:DenseArray,MI<:Tuple{Vararg{Base.MultiplicativeInverses.SignedMultiplicativeInverse{Int64},N}}},DenseArray{T,N},SubArray{T,N,A<:Union{Base.ReshapedArray{T,N,A<:DenseArray,MI<:Tuple{Vararg{Base.MultiplicativeInverses.SignedMultiplicativeInverse{Int64},N}}},DenseArray},I<:Tuple{Vararg{Union{Base.AbstractCartesianIndex,Colon,Int64,Range{Int64}},N}},L}}, ::Any) at multidimensional.jl:775
  permutedims{T,N}(::AbstractArray{T,N}, ::Any) at permuteddimsarray.jl:47

[tlnagy]

It turns out that I was mistaken and this pattern did not work on 0.4 either. What broke was doing something like the following

julia> using DataFrames

julia> A = rand([:a, :b], 2, 4)
2x4 Array{Symbol,2}:
 :b  :b  :a  :b
 :b  :a  :a  :a

julia> DataFrame(A')
4×2 DataFrames.DataFrame
│ Row │ x1 │ x2 │
├─────┼────┼────┤
│ 1   │ b  │ b  │
│ 2   │ b  │ a  │
│ 3   │ a  │ a  │
│ 4   │ b  │ a  │

This no longer works, but this is not directly due to the DataFrames package so I'm going to close this issue.