[R-pkg-devel] Submitting breaking changes to CRAN

[Ege Rubak]

Dear all,

I'm seeking advice on how to submit a new package version with breaking
changes to CRAN. I will try to make this short:

1. spatstat (<= 1.65) had grow to be very large with extensive
examples, tests, and documentation.
2. CRAN asked us to reduce package size and check time.
3. We reorganized the package into a new umbrella package spatstat 2.0
which Depends/Imports several subpackages named spatstat.xxxx.
4. All subpackages are now on CRAN.
5. We submitted spatstat 2.0-1 which breaks 79 reverse dependencies
because they e.g. call functions that have been moved from spatstat to
spatstat.xxxx.
6. All maintainers have been warned over a period of months and offered
detailed help to adjust their package. Many have reported back that
they have a new version ready that will work with spatstat (>=2.0) and
are waiting to submit until it is on CRAN.
7. We received notification on 23 Feburary that "package spatstat_2.0-
1.tar.gz has been auto-processed. The auto-check found problems when
checking the first order strong reverse dependencies.
Please reply-all and explain: Is this expected or do you need to fix
anything in your package? If expected, have all maintainers of affected
packages been informed well in advance? Are there false positives in
our results?"
8. We replied to all on the same day, 23 Feb, that this was expected
and maintainers had been informed. Since then we have no news.

Any advice on how to cross the finish line and get spatstat 2.0-1 on
CRAN without putting too big a burden on the CRAN volunteers?

I can only come up with a long shot:

Ask package maintainers to submit their spatstat 2.0 compatible package
to CRAN with an additional line in DESCRIPTION:

Additional_repositories: https://spatstat.r-universe.dev

Since spatstat 2.0-1 is available from this repository they may pass
the incoming checks on CRAN, but my hopes are not too high.

If this was successful the reverse dependencies would be compatible
with spatstat 2.0 and on CRAN and so spatstat 2.0 would break nothing
and we could resubmit.

Best regards,
Ege


-- 
Ege Rubak, Associate Professor,
Department of Mathematical Sciences, Aalborg University
Skjernvej 4A, 9220 Aalborg East, Denmark
Phone: (+45)99408861
Mobile: (+45)30230252
Email: rubak using math.aau.dk