[R-pkg-devel] (Not) Reporting minimum R version in DESCRIPTION Depends Field

[Ben Bolker]

   I'd add: as far as I know CRAN policy would only require you to
report the minimum version if your package would fail on one of the
older R versions that CRAN still tests (at present I think this goes
back to 3.5.2).  For regular package developers (i.e.  without the
resources of RStudio) it's a nuisance to install lots of old versions of
R just to find out how far back your package actually works.  IMO it's a
little bit obnoxious (albeit maybe unintentionally so) to prevent users
who are stuck with earlier versions from using your package without a
good reason.
  (For this reason I try to save RData files that are included in my
packages with version=2 so that users with R <3.5.0 aren't left out ...)

  Unless you know that your package depends on features introduced in a
particular version of R, I'd leave it out.  If you find out later from
users that it breaks on earlier versions, and you can't find a way to
enable its use on earlier versions, you can add the dependency in a
later release.

 Ben Bolker

On 2019-07-26 10:20 a.m., Hadley Wickham wrote:
> I no longer believe this to be good advice - I think you should only
> declare a specific dependency if you want to strongly assert that your
> package works with those versions. For example, all tidyverse versions
> depend on R 3.2 and later, because we test on all those versions.
> 
> Hadley
> 
> On Friday, July 26, 2019, Jarrett Phillips <phillipsjarrett1 using gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> Hello,
>>
>> Numerous CRAN packages report minimum R versions within the Depends field
>> of the DESCRIPTION file.
>>
>> Is this reporting always necessary?
>>
>> Hadley Wickham's book "R Packages" states:
>>
>> "You can also use Depends to require a specific version of R, e.g.
>> Depends: R
>> (>= 3.0.1) . As with packages, it’s a good idea to play it safe and require
>> a version greater than or equal to the version you’re currently using.
>> devtools::create()  will do this for you."
>>
>> devtools::check() doesn't warn about not specifying R version, so I am just
>> curious.
>>
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Jarrett
>>
>>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>
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> 
>