On Fri, Jul 26, 2019 at 8:46 AM Ben Bolker <bbol...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I'd add: as far as I know CRAN policy would only require you to > report the minimum version if your package would fail on one of the > older R versions that CRAN still tests (at present I think this goes > back to 3.5.2). For regular package developers (i.e. without the > resources of RStudio) it's a nuisance to install lots of old versions of > R just to find out how far back your package actually works.
If you already use travis, this is pretty easy. All you need is something like: matrix: include: - r: release - r: devel - r: oldrel - r: 3.4 - r: 3.3 - r: 3.2 - r: 3.1 Obviously the challenge is making things work on older versions of R — in our experience this is either really easy (i.e. you just accidentally used a function that was added to R recently) or really rather hard (your code on works in recent R because of bug that R core fixed) Hadley > IMO it's a > little bit obnoxious (albeit maybe unintentionally so) to prevent users > who are stuck with earlier versions from using your package without a > good reason. > (For this reason I try to save RData files that are included in my > packages with version=2 so that users with R <3.5.0 aren't left out ...) > > Unless you know that your package depends on features introduced in a > particular version of R, I'd leave it out. If you find out later from > users that it breaks on earlier versions, and you can't find a way to > enable its use on earlier versions, you can add the dependency in a > later release. > > Ben Bolker > > On 2019-07-26 10:20 a.m., Hadley Wickham wrote: > > I no longer believe this to be good advice - I think you should only > > declare a specific dependency if you want to strongly assert that your > > package works with those versions. For example, all tidyverse versions > > depend on R 3.2 and later, because we test on all those versions. > > > > Hadley > > > > On Friday, July 26, 2019, Jarrett Phillips <phillipsjarre...@gmail.com> > > wrote: > > > >> Hello, > >> > >> Numerous CRAN packages report minimum R versions within the Depends field > >> of the DESCRIPTION file. > >> > >> Is this reporting always necessary? > >> > >> Hadley Wickham's book "R Packages" states: > >> > >> "You can also use Depends to require a specific version of R, e.g. > >> Depends: R > >> (>= 3.0.1) . As with packages, it’s a good idea to play it safe and require > >> a version greater than or equal to the version you’re currently using. > >> devtools::create() will do this for you." > >> > >> devtools::check() doesn't warn about not specifying R version, so I am just > >> curious. > >> > >> > >> Thanks. > >> > >> Cheers, > >> > >> Jarrett > >> > >> [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > >> > >> ______________________________________________ > >> R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list > >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel > >> > > > > > > ______________________________________________ > R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel -- http://hadley.nz ______________________________________________ R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel