Re: R 3.0.0 and required rebuilds of all reverse Depends: of R

[Don Armstrong <don@debian.org>]

On Sun, 31 Mar 2013, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> It really does not add much as well already have a, say, Dependds:
> r-base-core (>= 3.0.0~20130327) so we are really just trading one
> for the other as far as I can tell.

The difference is that you can do the following:

r-base-core Provides: r-base-api-3

and all cran depends on r-base-api-3.

When the API changes incompatibly, and an entire rebuild is required,
you change the api, so that r-base-core now Provides r-base-api-4.
 
Now, all cran packages have to be upgraded in lockstep with R, and you
cannot have R packages installed which are incompatible with the R
interpreter.

The version number attached to the API only increments when the API
changes incompatibly. If the API changes in a complex way, you could
also conceivably provide multiple versions of the API in the base
package.


Don Armstrong

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