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[Bioc-devel] Package submission deadline Bioconductor 3.18

3 messages · Shepherd, Lori, Roger Bivand

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I have posted here before to warn that three CRAN spatial infrastructure packages will be retired/archived in October 2023 [1]. It would be very helpful if Bioconductor 3.18 packages made no use at all of rgdal. rgeos or maptools, and that those using sp added sf as a suggested package if operations on coordinate reference systems are used. Is it possible to add blocks on the use of retiring packages to 3.18 checks?

Roger

[1] https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/bioc-devel/2023-June/019727.html

--
Roger Bivand
Emeritus Professor
Norwegian School of Economics
Postboks 3490 Ytre Sandviken, 5045 Bergen, Norway
Roger.Bivand at nhh.no
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We don't have a way to preemptively block use of those packages.  It should happen naturally as when they are removed from CRAN the packages will start Erroring on the Bioconductor build system and they will receive warnings to fix or be at risk for deprecation.

On my quick search over my local checkout,  there seems to be no packages that use rgdal, one that uses rgeos  (flowDensity) , and two that uses maptools  (GEOexplorer, GateFinder)  as listed in the DESCRIPTION/NAMESPACE file.  I will reach out to these three packages individually as well to notify them of the impending changes.  As far as use  of sp,  I could find five packages that currently list sp in the DESCRIPTION that I can also send an email too:  synergyfinder, structToolbox, stJoincount, SPIAT, and flowDensity.


Thank you for your diligence and advance notices of affected packages.  Hopefully they can make changes early to avoid any disruption or potential deprecation.

Cheers,



Lori Shepherd - Kern

Bioconductor Core Team

Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center

Department of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics

Elm & Carlton Streets

Buffalo, New York 14263
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Thanks, that is helpful. As of now I have opened issues with https://github.com/guypwhunt/GEOexplorer/issues/44 and written to the maintainer of flowDensity (cc-ed here). I don't think splancs, used by GateFinder, is a problem. Those using sp but not retiring packages seem to be OK in my reverse dependency checks. So the exposure is limited, but other Bioconductor packages may depend on the exposed packages, so I hope that they will update while still on 3.17, and certainly before 3.18.

Best wishes,

Roger
 
--
Roger Bivand
Emeritus Professor
Norwegian School of Economics
Postboks 3490 Ytre Sandviken, 5045 Bergen, Norway
Roger.Bivand at nhh.no