[Discussion/Question]: what to do when a version doesn't exist on CRAN nor on GitHub tag?

[averissimo]

What is your question?

On strategy: release Should we default to GitHub if version doesn't exist on CRAN / GH tag?

Example

Context, teal.slice last release/tag is 0.4.0. The development main branch is at 0.4.9013

teal's development dependency teal.slice version was changed:

• From teal.slice (>= 0.4.0)
• To teal.slice (>= 0.4.9011)
  • due to a new function only available from that (dev) version

Current outcome:

• ❌ verdepcheck fails to find version 0.4.9011 as it's not released on CRAN tagged on GitHub

Possible solution:

1. Accept this limitation
2. When version is not found on CRAN, nor on GitHub tags, it uses the latest development version

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[averissimo]

(moving discussion from chat to issue @pawelru)

There are some caveats, but I like solution 2. as that's the most effective to avoid bottlenecks.

[pawelru]

For me this is an obvious expected failure (true negative) - testing against released version of dependency fails because development version is required. This gives an important information to a teal maintainer that it cannot be released before releasing teal.slice first. From a different angle: if you decide to vbump any dependency to a devel version it is expected that the release strategy will fail.

When version is not found on CRAN, nor on GitHub tags, it uses the latest development version

If you do this then you are somewhat mixing max and release strategy. In the example you provided: teal maintainer won't be notified that teal cannot be released before releasing teal.slice first.

It's quite clear for me. Please let me know if you need some further explanation. If not - let's close this.