Upstream of r-cran-fontawesome embds Font Awesome v5. I noticed that
the fonts-font-awesome is tracking version 4, and that a previous
update to v5 was reverted as the major version numbers are not
compatible, and many Debian packages rely on v4 [1]. Upstream Font
Awesome treats the major versions as separate LTS releases and
probably the most useful thing would be for each of v4, v5, and v6 to
be available in Debian as separate packages, e.g.
fonts-font-awesome-5.
Hi Eric,
The underlying issue is that the Font Awesome upstream project changed its licensing with the release of v5, and the subsequent releases can't be packaged because it can't be built. It's essentially no longer free software after that point (although don't ask me to quote the precise nuances of the changes off the top of my head...).
... which is a FOSS project intentionally trying to track compatibility, but remaining open to contribution and building. It is packaged for Debian, although I can't speak directly to how one swaps out the packages in an R context. Long-term, I suspect that's what CRAN package maintainers will have to look at.
(Also please do note that I'm not involved in the project even though I got added to the GitHub project a long time ago; I think that was just because I knew some people who worked on it.)
Anyway, that's the gist. I'm sure there are other people on this list who might could address practical matters better than I, but the licensing thing is essentially the core of it.
Sorry not to have an easy solution to offer,
Nate