On Tue, 8 Jun 2021 17:37:30 -0500 Jonathan Keane <jke...@gmail.com> wrote: > I've been digging a bit to try and put numbers on those users the Neal > mentions. Specifically, we know that requiring C++17 will mean that R > users on windows using versions of R before 4.0.0 will not be able to > compile/install arrow. Although R version 3.6 is no longer supported > by CRAN [1], many people hang on to older versions for an extended > period of time. > > We are still working on getting more solid numbers about how many > people might still be on these old versions, but here is what I have > so far: > > Using Rstudio's cran mirror logs of package installations [2] (and > with the help of Arrow datasets to process/filter these files 🎉) for > the period from 2020-05-18 [3] to today, for the installations that > have an r version reported approximately 27% of the windows package > installs are on versions before 4.0.0 (and therefore would be unable > to install arrow if we require C++17 right now).
Is this because binary packages are forbidden in R-land? Do Windows users of R really install Arrow from source? Or is it really impossible to use a modern compiler when building R packages for R versions older than 4.0 ? Note the requirement we're proposing to bump is for *building* Arrow. Using binaries should not be affected, especially on Windows (on Linux, you must be a bit more careful, but normally the CentOS devtoolset should take care of that). Regards Antoine.
