Re: To strict version restrictions injected by dh-r (Was: Bug#1040001: Seeking advise how to proceed with the transition / move R stack to testing)

[Gordon Ball <gordon@chronitis.net>]

Hi Andreas

On 06/07/2023 22:09, Andreas Tille wrote:
> > It comes from this line:
> > https://salsa.debian.org/r-pkg-team/dh-r/-/blob/master/dh/R.pm#L272
> >
> > More precisely the “r-base-core (>= $rbase_version)” part, which
> > imposes an unnecessarily tight restriction on the r-base-core version.
> Got it, thanks for the explanation.  This restriction existed since the
> early stage of dh-r development
>
>     https://salsa.debian.org/r-pkg-team/dh-r/-/commit/22fd80b9#L174
>
> by Gordon Ball (in CC but not really active in R pkg team any more) at
> 2016-09-04 12:28:57 +0200 .  I'm guessing this restriction was obtained
> from the cdbs helper that existed before the dh support was created by
> Gordon and he simply took over what existed there.  The according line
> in the initial commit of dh-r is

I'm pretty sure I cargo-culted it from the previous CDBS helper when 
writing dh-r. I assumed it was meant to allow for non-backwards 
compatible bytecode, but I'm not sure I investigated the exact semantics 
it was meant to be enforcing. I concur that it sounds like the 
`$rapiversion` dependency is probably sufficient.

(Yes, I'm afraid I don't really have an ongoing interest in R - I used 
it a lot in academia, but it hasn't really featured in professional life 
since then).

Gordon