[R-sig-Debian] R 4.1.0 and Graphics Packages

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 21 May 2021 at 10:56, Johannes Ranke wrote:
| Hi all,
| 
| The NEWS for R 4.1.0 contain the note:
| 
| - The graphics engine version, R_GE_version, has been bumped to 14 and so 
| packages that provide graphics devices should be reinstalled
| 
| And indeed, I just ran into this and got a 
| 
|   Graphics API version mismatch
| 
| error when using the tikzDevice package with my fresh CRAN backport of R 4.1.0 
| that Dirk uploaded to experimental. The error went away after reinstalling 
| tikzDevice.

Eeek. Didn't think of that.
 
| For CRAN backports users, I just added a note on the Debian page
| 
|   https://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/debian/#debian-bullseye-testing 
| 
| (it will take a while for the mirrors to sync).
| 
| Before the r-api system was introduced, I used to set up fresh repositories 
| when R introduced breaking changes, in order to avoid that an apt-get upgrade 
| breaks installed R package functionality. This one slipped by my attention.
| 
| For the Debian R packages, I think we should find out which of the R packages 
| in the Debian archive are affected by this (r-cran-rgl, r-cran-svglite, r-cran-
| vdiffr which embeds svglite, ggplot2, ...) and add versioned Breaks.
| 
| Or should the r-api Version be bumped from r-api-4.0 to r-api-4.1?

I would prefer not, and don't think it is called for. But then I often argued
for a more 'laissez-faire' approach that others (on the other list, i.e. debian-r). 

Once the release is made, I will put R 4.1.0-* into unstable and rebuild at
least all the packages from experimental.  Me thinks we can handle this via
the normal bug track mechanism. But the backport may have extra issue. But
maybe your list of 'has graphics' packages is good enough?

Dirk

-- 
https://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd using debian.org