I can't replicate this yet on my end. Maybe you can try this on your end and see if you can find a reproducible example. Perhaps it is a version issue (always note your software versions when posting to support site). Below I'm using the devel version of tximport v1.15.8, but I believe this will be performing the same as release (v1.14), as the 8 version bumps were mostly documentation and modifications of warning messages.
Setup:
dir <- system.file("extdata", package="tximportData")
samples <- read.table(file.path(dir,"samples.txt"), header=TRUE)
files <- file.path(dir,"salmon_gibbs", samples$run, "quant.sf.gz")
names(files) <- paste0("sample",1:6)
With inferential replicates:
> txi <- tximport(files, type="salmon", txOut=TRUE)
> head(txi$counts)
sample1 sample2 sample3 sample4 sample5 sample6
ENST00000448914.1 0 0 0 0 0 0
ENST00000631435.1 0 0 0 0 0 0
ENST00000632684.1 0 0 0 0 0 0
ENST00000434970.2 0 0 0 0 0 0
ENST00000415118.1 0 0 0 0 0 0
ENST00000633010.1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Without inferential replicates:
txi <- tximport(files, type="salmon", txOut=TRUE, dropInfReps=TRUE)
> head(txi$counts)
sample1 sample2 sample3 sample4 sample5 sample6
ENST00000448914.1 0 0 0 0 0 0
ENST00000631435.1 0 0 0 0 0 0
ENST00000632684.1 0 0 0 0 0 0
ENST00000434970.2 0 0 0 0 0 0
ENST00000415118.1 0 0 0 0 0 0
ENST00000633010.1 0 0 0 0 0 0
I do not exactly the answer but I am interested to know the answer of this question.
Were you able to try the code I posted?