[R-sig-Geo] spdep: model fitting functions moving to new package spatialreg

[Roger Bivand]

I am sorry to have to disturb users of the spdep package who have used it 
to fit spatial regression models.

The package has become large and hard to maintain. Functions to create and 
handle spatial neighbours, and to test for spatial autocorrelation remain 
in spdep. Functions to fit spatial regression models are now in the new 
package spatialreg (1.1-3 on CRAN). They are _also_ in spdep 1.1-2 now on 
its way to CRAN.

If you use spdep as you have done until now, the versions of the functions 
in spdep will be used if you have not installed spatialreg, and you will 
see warnings that the spdep functions are deprecated. If you have 
installed spatialreg, you will see warnings too, but the estimation will 
be done using the spatialreg namespace internally. If you install 
spatialreg, and attach spdep followed by spatialreg, you will see that the 
spdep model fitting functions are masked by their equivalents in 
spatialreg.

During May, I expect to make the spdep versions of the model fitting 
functions defunct, gradually removing the masking problem. Most use of 
spdep by packages importing its namespace or attaching it only use 
functions creating and handling neighbour objects. The division of 
functionalities will benefit that majority of packages, because spdep will 
load faster and draw in fewer packages on which it depends. However, 
improving workflows for users of those packages means that users of model 
fitting functions will need to use spdep for neighbour objects and in 
addition spatialreg for model estimation and evaluation.

This split was discussed on github:

https://github.com/r-spatial/spdep/issues/31

and twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerBivand/status/1105023658341351424

Please take up issues on github:

https://github.com/r-spatial/spdep/issues
https://github.com/r-spatial/spatialreg/issues

on this list or by direct email.

I hope that this reconfiguration will improve the software going forward.

Grateful for feedback,

Roger

-- 
Roger Bivand
Department of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics,
Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway.
voice: +47 55 95 93 55; e-mail: Roger.Bivand using nhh.no
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2392-6140
https://scholar.google.no/citations?user=AWeghB0AAAAJ&hl=en