[R-sig-Debian] Xenial repository for R 4.0.0

[Michael Rutter]

On 5/8/20 9:17 AM, J C Nash wrote:
> Over a week ago (on r-help, my bad!) I raised a question of why the
> ubuntu install instructions
> 
> https://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/README.html
> 
> instruct users with a xenial-based system to use
> 
> deb https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu xenial-cran40/
> 
> Looking at https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/
> there is no xenial-cran40 directory. However,
> https://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/
> does have this directory, and I managed to update a machine
> still running Linux Mint 18.3 by putting in
> deb https://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu xenial-cran40/
> 
> I suspect novice users might not have found this work-around, and
> it was only by chance I found it.
> 
> My query: Is it intended that xenial support will not be available
> for R 4.0? Or is this this just an oversight? Or some quirk that affects
> just my environment? I've tried to ensure caches are updated.

That is a bit odd.  CRAN syncs with my server for the Ubuntu directory, 
which both have the xenial-cran40 directory.  So it appears that 
whomever maintains cloud.r-project.org has not enabled that directory to 
be synced.  I will into that.

I have every intention of supporting Xenial for as long as R still 
builds against it.
  Michael