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

[Ege Rubak]

Dear Duncan,

Thanks for taking the time to read my message and for the constructive
idea. You are right that it is a bit late for us to do this now. Given
that spatstat (<=1.65) exports >2,500 objects which are now spread
across sub-packages we would obviously have to make a script to help us
reexport the functions and make documentation containing links to the
real man page. This might be doable, but one big downside is that we
then don't use this occasion to move package dependencies from spatstat
to the relevant spatstat.xxxx. If the packages don't fail I'm afraid
that a lot of maintainers wont change anything, and their package will
depend on the entire ensemble of spatstat packages rather than just the
relevant sub-package(s). For our usual end users this would also mean
that when they open the help file of given function after attaching
spatstat it will just contain a huge list of links to the real help
file they are looking for which is a nuisance.

Unless we get other really good suggestions we will wait a bit more on
a reply from CRAN (we sent a gentle reminder a week ago) and hopefully
learn what we should do differently to get the last bit in place.

Best regards,
Ege


On Thu, 2021-03-11 at 14:56 -0500, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> 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
> > 
> >