[Rd] [External] Re: API updates for R 4.6.0

[Iñaki Ucar]

On Fri, 17 Apr 2026 at 12:56, <luke-tierney using uiowa.edu> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 17 Apr 2026, Iñaki Ucar wrote:
>
> > Dear Luke,
> >
> > On Thu, 16 Apr 2026 at 21:43, luke-tierney--- via R-devel
> > <r-devel using r-project.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> The installed C header files for R 4.6.0 should now correspond to the
> >> C API as defined by the Writing R Extensions manual: All entry points
> >> and variables declared in the headers are now part of the API.  This
> >> helps clarify the interface available to package developers, and
> >> provides the encapsulation needed to allow improvements to internals
> >> of R without impacting packages. Many thanks to package developers who
> >> helped in developing new API features to make this possible and who
> >> worked on moving away from using non-API features.
> >>
> >> A small number of packages with significant reverse dependencies have
> >> not yet completed the transition. CRAN will be hosting transitional
> >> versions for these until their maintainers submit updates.
> >
> > Does this mean that these packages will now fail instead of generating a NOTE?
>
> The unmodified versions will now fail to install and that would
> prevent other packages from installing. That is why transitional
> versions are needed. About a third of those have already been updated
> by their maintainers; updates for mot others have been promised soon.

I'm thinking here about updating the R rpm package in Fedora. This
means that I would need to update R-Rcpp too to the transitional
version. Which I don't particularly like on the one hand, and it's a
bit of a pain, because it would need special treatment of the spec, as
it breaks the automation we have to retrieve the sources.

Is there any compilation flag I could activate in R's config that
makes it compatible with current package versions without the
transitional ones? (I.e. that still enables the deprecated API symbols
until everything is up-to-date)

Best,
Iñaki

>
> Best,
>
> luke
>
> >
> > Best,
> > Iñaki
> >
> >>
> >> Best,
> >>
> >> luke
> >>
> >> --
> >> Luke Tierney
> >> Ralph E. Wareham Professor of Mathematical Sciences
> >> University of Iowa                  Phone:             319-335-3386
> >> Department of Statistics and        Fax:               319-335-3017
> >>     Actuarial Science
> >> 241 Schaeffer Hall                  email:   luke-tierney using uiowa.edu
> >> Iowa City, IA 52242                 WWW:  http://www.stat.uiowa.edu/
> >>
> >> ______________________________________________
> >> R-devel using r-project.org mailing list
> >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> >>
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> Luke Tierney
> Ralph E. Wareham Professor of Mathematical Sciences
> University of Iowa                  Phone:             319-335-3386
> Department of Statistics and        Fax:               319-335-3017
>     Actuarial Science
> 241 Schaeffer Hall                  email:   luke-tierney using uiowa.edu
> Iowa City, IA 52242                 WWW:  http://www.stat.uiowa.edu/



-- 
Iñaki Úcar