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

[Duncan Murdoch]

It may be too late to do this now, but you could use the approach that 
devtools used when it was broken up:  The main package imports functions 
from the new spatstat.xxxx packages and exports them.  This way it could 
be done with no breaking changes.  Reverse dependencies could change to 
depend on spatstat.xxxx at their leisure.

Duncan Murdoch

On 11/03/2021 10:18 a.m., Ege Rubak wrote:
> 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
> 
>