Require R >= 4.1?

[dtburk]

We are getting R CMD Check errors on R 3.6 now. An example of the error is:

Error: --- re-building 'ipums-api-agg.Rmd' using rmarkdown
Quitting from ipums-api-agg.Rmd:150-152 [unnamed-chunk-4]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
<error/rlang_error>
Error in `vapply()`:
! values must be length 1,
 but FUN(X[[1]]) result is length 0
---
Backtrace:
    x
 1. \-vcr::insert_cassette("nhgis-metadata-summary")
 2.   \-webmockr::enable(quiet = vcr_c$quiet)
 3.     \-base::vapply(...)

Gemini suggests that this could be due to the fact that webmockr requires R >= 4.1, which means that when testing on R 3.6, we are forced to use an older version of webmockr, and perhaps the combination of an older version of webmockr with a newer version of vcr is leading to this error.

The easiest and most sustainable fix would probably be to up our minimum required R version to 4.1. Would you have any objections to that change @robe2037?

[robe2037]

In general I fully support updating to 4.1. That's still in line with the general guidelines to support the current R version plus at least 4 previous versions, and it seems that lots of packages are starting to require R 4.1.

But I'd also be more confident about a solution if I could find some details on this issue reported elsewhere. It could be that updating vcr would be sufficient for a fix. Right now we only suggest vcr 0.6.0, but vcr has since decoupled from webmockr (see here). Even if this resolves the current vignette issues, I still think that before long an update to R 4.1 would be warranted.

[dtburk]

Was doing a little more digging, and it looks like our 3.6 actions are installing vcr 1.2.2 and webmockr 0.9.0, whereas our release actions are installing vcr 2.0.0 and don't need to install webmockr at all (probably because of the decoupling you noted). It looks like vcr started requiring R 4.1 as of version 2.0.0. But my searching yesterday didn't turn up any discussion of this error in relation to vcr or webmockr. I'm inclined to just up the required R version rather than dig any deeper.

[robe2037]

Thanks for looking—I'm happy with this solution!