[R-pkg-devel] CRAN stable download url?

[Jonathon Love]

hi,

i'm bundling some R packages to go into a flatpak/flathub application. 
for that it is necessary to provide the download URLs for all the 
required dependencies in advance - including R packages. this works, 
*except* when an R package version transitions from being the current 
version, to being archived.

the current version will be, say:

https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/yaml_2.1.16.tar.gz

then when yaml 2.1.17 comes out (which it just has), that url will 
return a 404, and has become:

https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/yaml/yaml_2.1.16.tar.gz

this means everything breaks when a new version of an R package comes out.

does anyone know if a stable url exists for R packages?

with thanks

jonathon