[R-sig-Geo] complex dependency of gstat on sp, R 2.4.0

[Edzer J. Pebesma]

Roger,

install.packages("gstat") with 2.4 over a 2.3 library gives me the 
following:

...
ufctr.o sprow.o spswap.o stat.o submat.o userio.o utils.o vario.o 
vario_fn.o vario_io.o vecop.o version.o writecmd.o xvalid.o   
-L/usr/lib/R/lib -lR
** R
** data
** demo
** inst
** preparing package for lazy loading
Loading required package: sp
Error in loadNamespace(package, c(which.lib.loc, lib.loc), keep.source = 
keep.source) :
        in 'sp' methods for export not found: bbox, coordinates, 
coordinates<-, coordnames, coordnames<-, gridded, polygons, polygons<-, 
dimensions, [, transform, overlay, plot, recenter, spplot, spsample, summary
Error: package 'sp' could not be loaded
Execution halted
ERROR: lazy loading failed for package 'gstat'
** Removing '/home/edzer/S/library/gstat'
** Restoring previous '/home/edzer/S/library/gstat'

The downloaded packages are in
        /tmp/RtmpnLPOlM/downloaded_packages
Warning messages:
1: installation of package 'gstat' had non-zero exit status in: 
install.packages("gstat")
2: cannot create HTML package index in: tools:::unix.packages.html(.Library)

but when I first do install.packges("sp"), followed by ("gstat"), there 
are no problems.
I guess that my R version doesn't check for the dependencies first, or 
guesses
(wrong) that sp is fine: the dependence on sp is rather complicated: if 
R >= 2.4,
require sp >= 0.9, else sp >= 0.8. This is hard to express in DESCRIPTION.

Bests,
--
Edzer