[R-pkg-devel] What counts as an API change?

[Hugh Parsonage]

> The approach I take is a major version increment is required if it
> requires an existing unit test to be changed or if it requires a reverse
> dependency to change a unit test.
>
> (With the exception of tests marked explicitly as unstable.)
>
> In my view the test suite is a good way to advertise exactly what
> developers can rely on in minor version upgrades.
>
> On Wed, 25 Sep 2019 at 11:52 pm, David Hugh-Jones <
> davidhughjones using gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Philosophical question. My package follows semantic versioning (
>> https://semver.org). Incompatible API changes should trigger a major
>> version upgrade. OK, but what counts as an incompatible change to an R
>> API?
>> Suppose my current function signature is
>>
>> foo <- function (a, b, c, d)
>>
>> and the new one is
>>
>> foo <- function (a, b, c, d, e)
>>
>> is that compatible? What if I add an argument, but not at the end:
>>
>> foo <- function (a, b, c, e, d)
>>
>> That would be incompatible if people have been calling the arguments by
>> order rather than by name. But sometimes that is unlikely: I doubt if many
>> people write
>>
>> lm(y ~ x, mydata, z==3, f, na.omit, "qr", FALSE, FALSE, TRUE, TRUE, FALSE)
>>
>> Should I be strict or relaxed about this?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> David
>>
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>>
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>

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