[Rd] Rtools and R 4.0.0?

[Jeroen Ooms]

On Mon, Apr 6, 2020 at 9:15 AM Prof Brian Ripley <ripley using stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> On 02/04/2020 05:35, Kevin Ushey wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > Has a decision been made yet as to whether R 4.0.0 on Windows is going
> > to be built using the new gcc8 toolchain (described at
> > https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/testing/rtools40.html)?
>
> Short answer: 'no'.
>
> >>From the sidelines, I can see that the toolchain is being used to
> > build and test packages on CRAN; if there are any remaining issues
> > that I can help to try and run down (either in R or any CRAN packages)
> > I'd be happy to try and help.
>
> It is still under consideration, but resource constraints are biting
> hard as people's lives get more complicated.

Given the amount of work that has gone into this and the importance of
an up-to-date toolchain for maintaining well-functioning and current
system libraries and R packages, I think it should be considered to
delay the R 4.0 release over this until everyone is ready.