How to prevent `rgdal`, `rgeos` and `maptools` being built from R-forge when archived on CRAN?

[rsbivand]

@jeroen this is a sequencing problem. https://r-spatial.github.io/evolution/ describes the background - we're now down to ~ 160 CRAN packages failing in one way or another when using sp 2.1-0 (to be released late September/early October) which uses sf if available, and uses none of the retiring packages rgdal, rgeos or maptools and when the retiring packages are not on the library path. About 120 of these failing packages have github issues, the rest were alerted up to 8 months ago by email.

Should I tell you when the retiring packages have been archived on CRAN, ao that your processes can stop tracking R-forge? The R-forge repos will remain in place, as a resource of last resort to any users who get stuck, and to provide minimal protection in case security bugs are found in PROJ, GDAL or GEOS, but no support for users.

Small extra point, rgrass7 will be fully replaced by rgrass and archived also in early October, as rgrass7 uses rgdal but rgrass uses terra.

[jeroen]

R-universe should automatically stop tracking cran packages when archived on cran by request of the author.

If packages are archived by cran without request from the author, r-universe stops tracking after 60days ( if not unarchived by then)

But if that anything does not work let me know by the time and ill look into it :)

[rsbivand]

@jeroen Thanks! We'll keep you in the loop.

[rsbivand]

@jeroen sp 2.1-0 published on CRAN. Retirement date for maptools, rgdal, rgeos and rgrass7 to be 16 October 2023. Possibly 100+ packages have not (yet) updated despite changes being trivial for many (stale roxygen markup, etc.), so they will be archived by CRAN on failure. They've all been notified by me, few have many reverse dependencies.

[jeroen]

The bot has automatically removed these packages from the index: https://github.com/r-universe-org/cran-to-git/commit/d86efab2f3092af09c14a3

So as a result they were removed form the r-forge and rsbivand universes:

• https://github.com/r-universe/r-forge/commit/5f2ca89125f03439e41a26d7e294c54a882e7a72
• https://github.com/r-universe/rsbivand/commit/630a115b39bb571767934c974965c548592bf237

However CRAN did not (yet) archive reverse dependencies, so we now have an inconsistent network with CRAN packages that have a strong dependency on one of the above.

[rsbivand]

Thanks for reporting. Because the n-order reverse dependencies will take time to be archived on CRAN, they estimate from hours to weeks, as some n-order deserve a grace period (1st order were all warned and will go quicker unless they themselves have many unwarned strong reverse dependencies).