Rscript does not load methods package, R does — why, and what are the consequences?

Question

Just saw this:

$ Rscript -e "sessionInfo()['basePkgs']"
$basePkgs
[1] "stats"     "graphics"  "grDevices" "utils"     "datasets"  "base"

$ R --vanilla --slave -e "sessionInfo()['basePkgs']"
$basePkgs
[1] "stats"     "graphics"  "grDevices" "utils"     "datasets"  "methods"
[7] "base"

The methods package seems to be always available when running R, but not with Rscript. I suspect that this is to gain performance, but are there any practical implications besides the obvious? I'm asking because of a funny bug that is triggered by the presence or absence of the methods package.

Answer 1

According to ?Rscript the methods package isn't loaded because, "The default for Rscript omits methods as it takes about 60% of the startup time."