[Rd] RFC: 'igraph' package update and backward compatibility

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Thu, 20 Oct 2011, Rainer M Krug wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 8:05 PM, G?bor Cs?rdi <csardi at rmki.kfki.hu> wrote:
>
>> Dear R developers,
>>
>> I am seeking advice on some $subject matter.

If this is intended to be a CRAN update, then really you need to ask 
the CRAN crew about the possible implications (and I've sent a private 
reply to Gábor and them).

>> My package will have an update soon, that is not backward compatible
>> with the current version. It will likely break much of the existing
>> code. Many (~50) packages depend on 'igraph' and they, too,  will most
>> probably break with the new version.
>>
>
> Don't forget the indirect dependencies - might be many more.

Why would they need to change?  There are indeed current 50 CRAN/BioC 
packages which directly depend on igraph according to 
tools::dependsOnPkgs().  However, there are another 12 which 
'Suggests: igraph', and those might need to change.

>
> One approach used by e.g. ggplot and roxygen, is to call the new package
> ggplot2 or roxygen2. This would not break old packages.
>
>
>> My intended solution is, that I create a snapshot of the current
>> package, under another name (igraph0), and ask package maintainers to
>> depend on that version. Then, after a short time, I'll update the
>> current igraph version.
>>
>
> I would rather give the new one a a new name by appending the 2
>
>
>> Do you see any drawbacks of this solution? Is there some existing
>> practice for situations like this? Suggestions are greatly
>> appreciated.
>>
>
> Well - they require immediate action by the package maintainers. Yo could
> put a warning in the original iplot package, that the package is not updated
> any more and that a switch to iplot 2 is suggested. So no immediate action
> by the package maintainers is required.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Rainer
>
>
>> Btw. an alternative would be to ask them to depend on the exact
>> current version of the package. This is an easier solution, but it
>> won't give people the opportunity to load both versions of the package
>> at the same time, if they want to run their old code.
>>
>> Thank You, Best Regards,
>> Gabor
>>
>> --
>> Gabor Csardi <csardi.gabor at gmail.com> Dept. Statistics, Harvard University
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation Biology,
> UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)
>
> Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology
> Stellenbosch University
> South Africa
>
> Tel :       +33 - (0)9 53 10 27 44
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>
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>
> email:      Rainer at krugs.de
>
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>
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>
>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
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