opts_current locking in 1.44 is breaking JuliaCall

[cderv]

@yihui Just to track this in order to help them solve this as for now CRAN version of Julia does not work with knitr 1.44 when plots.

it came up in

• https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/issues/7055 after the impact of
• https://github.com/yihui/knitr/issues/1798

JuliaCall is using opts_current$set, so they need to update but it seems they did not see problem yet. https://github.com/Non-Contradiction/JuliaCall/blob/c05473bea78a0197c639f7e82ab1c6f2e943e1cc/R/RMarkdown.R#L56C1-L60

It seems there is a stale maintenance question though there...

• https://github.com/Non-Contradiction/JuliaCall/issues/208

So hopefully we can help.

• [ ] I plan to at least do a PR
• [ ] Should we consider a workaround on our side until PR is merged and new JuliaCall is on CRAN ? Maybe follow more usual progressive change by warning and then error ? So that all package maintainer can update... We could go through a basic search list to see which tool can be impacted (https://github.com/search?q=%22opts_current%24set%22+language%3AR&type=code)

[yihui]

I tend to change the error to warning for now.

[bschneidr]

Perhaps knitr could rely on JuliaConnectoR instead of JuliaCall?

https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/JuliaConnectoR/index.html

JuliaCall doesn't seem to be actively maintained, whereas JuliaConnectoR is actively maintained and seems much better documented (for example, it now has a detailed JSS paper).

[yihui]

@bschneidr The status of JuliaCall is indeed a little concerning, but the nice thing is this: https://github.com/Non-Contradiction/JuliaCall/blob/master/R/RMarkdown.R i.e., it has provided an engine function that can be set via knitr::knit_engine$set(). If JuliaConnectoR also provides such a function, I'll be happy to support it on knitr's side. Thank you!

[cderv]

@bschneidr I would advise opening an issue at https://github.com/stefan-m-lenz/JuliaConnectoR for a julia engine for knitr.

We can then chime in if help is needed for that. Thank you !