On StackOverflow (https://stackoverflow.com/q/63409565/2554330), a user
was confused by the error messages from R when the DESCRIPTION file for
his package specified
Imports: stats >= 4.0.2
The message from an attempted source build in R 3.6.1 said:
Warning in install.packages :
dependency ?stats? is not available
installing the source package ?doebioresearch?
and later
Error in loadNamespace(j <- i[[1L]], c(lib.loc, .libPaths()),
versionCheck = vI[[j]]) :
namespace 'stats' 3.6.1 is already loaded, but >= 4.0.2 is
required
Calls: <Anonymous> ... namespaceImportFrom -> asNamespace ->
loadNamespace
Execution halted
Would it be worth giving an error or warning right away based on the
Imports line? It doesn't make sense to specify the version of a base
package. If he had specified R >= 4.0.2 I think the messages for R
3.6.1 users would have been less confusing.
Duncan Murdoch