[Rcpp-devel] [ANN] Matrix package bug fix release RcppArmadillo 0.10.1.2.1 on drat

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

Happy New Year Martin and everybody!

On 1 January 2021 at 12:32, Martin Maechler wrote:
| I had wanted to send e-mail to all Matrix reverse dependent
| packages affected,  as one of the changes indeed was very much
| on purpose and listed among the (very rare!!) user visible NEWS
| of Matrix:
| 
|    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|     * Significant User-Visible Change
| 
|     Matrix(*, doDiag=TRUE) where doDiag=TRUE has always been the default is now 
|     obeyed also in the sparse case, as all "diagonalMatrix" are also "sparseMatrix".
| 
|     Matrix(0, 3,3) returns a "ddiMatrix" instead of a "dsCMatrix" previously.
|     The latter is still returned from Matrix(0, 3,3, doDiag=FALSE), and
|     e.g., .symDiagonal(3,pi).
| 
|     Also a triangular matrix, e.g., "dtrMatrix" is detected now in cases with NAs.
| 
|     This is both a bug fix and an API change which breaks code that assumes
|     Matrix(.) to return a "CsparseMatrix" in cases where it now returns a
|     "diagonalMatrix" (which does extend "sparseMatrix").
|    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Without explicitly checking) I think that is the change we then made, and
such a change is totally legitimate.  What my previous email tried to express
was more a slight "surprise" at the release and CRAN process for this.

"Known significant" (and ever-so-slightly breaking) changes are "usually"
communicated ex-ante to dependent packages, and in the case of CRAN breakage
(as happened here, with the lack of a heads-up) I am surprise 1.3.0 got
released there. I noticed this with looking into the (planned, upcoming, non
breaking) next Rcpp release and a higher-than-anticipated number of packages
had some test issues.

But I am sure we can sort all this out in the coming days.

Cheers, Dirk

-- 
https://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org