[Rd] R 4.5.0 is released

peter dalgaard
Fri, 11 Apr 2025 09:36:22 -0000

The build system rolled up R-4.5.0.tar.gz and .xz (codename "How About a
Twenty-Six") this morning.

This is a major release with a number of new features, API changes, and bug
fixes.

The list below details the changes in this release.

You can get the source code from

https://cran.r-project.org/src/base/R-4/R-4.5.0.tar.gz
https://cran.r-project.org/src/base/R-4/R-4.5.0.tar.xz

or wait for it to be mirrored at a CRAN site nearer to you.

Binaries for various platforms will appear in due course.


For the R Core Team,

Peter Dalgaard


These are the checksums (md5 and SHA-256) for the freshly created files, in case
you wish
to check that they are uncorrupted:

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This is the relevant part of the NEWS file

CHANGES IN R 4.5.0:

  NEW FEATURES:

    ? as.integer(rl) and hence as.raw(rl) now work for a list of raw(1)
      elements, as proposed by Michael Chirico's PR#18696.

    ? graphics' grid() gains optional argument nintLog.

    ? New functions check_package_urls() and check_package_dois() in
      package tools for checking URLs and DOIs in package sources.

    ? New head() and tail() methods for class "ts" time series,
      proposed by Spencer Graves on R-devel.

    ? New qr.influence() function, a ?bare bones? interface to the
      lm.influence() leave-one-out diagnostics computations; wished for
      in PR#18739.

    ? Package citation() results auto-generated from the package
      metadata now also provide package DOIs for CRAN and Bioconductor
      packages.

    ? New function grepv() identical to grep() except for the default
      value = TRUE.

    ? methods(<pkg>:::<genfun>) now does report methods when neither
      the generic nor the methods have been exported.

    ? pdf() gains an author argument to set the corresponding metadata
      field, and logical arguments timestamp and producer to optionally
      omit the respective metadata.  (Thanks to Edzer Pebesma.)

    ? grDevices::glyphInfo() gains a rot argument to allow per-glyph
      rotation.  (Thanks to Daniel Sabanes Bove.)

    ? Package tools now exports functions CRAN_current_db(),
      CRAN_aliases_db(), CRAN_rdxrefs_db(), CRAN_archive_db(), and
      CRAN_authors_db().

    ? Package tools now exports functions R() and
      parse_URI_reference().

    ? Package tools now exports functions base_aliases_db() and
      base_rdxrefs_db().

    ? It is now possible to set the background color for row and column
      names in the data editor on Windows (Rgui).

    ? Rterm on Windows now accepts input lines of unlimited length.

    ? file.info() on Windows now provides file owner name and domain.

    ? Sys.info() on Windows now provides current user domain.

    ? findInterval() gets new arguments checkSorted and checkNA which
      allow skipping relatively costly checks; related to PR#16567.

    ? pnorm(x) underflows more gracefully.

    ? get(nam, env) now signals a _classed_ error, "getMissingError",
      as ?subclass? of "missingArgError" where the latter is used also
      in similar situations, e.g., f <- function(x) exp(x); try(f()) .

    ? The set operations now avoid the as.vector() transformation for
      same-kind apparently vector-like operands.

    ? md5sum() can be used to compute an MD5 hash of a raw vector of
      bytes by using the bytes= argument instead of files=. The two
      arguments are mutually exclusive.

    ? Added function sha256sum() in package tools analogous to md5sum()
      implementing the SHA-256 hashing algorithm.

    ? The xtfrm() method for class "AsIs" is now considerably faster
      thanks to a patch provided by Ivan Krylov.

    ? The merge() method for data frames will no longer convert row
      names used for indexing using I(), which will lead to faster
      execution in cases where sort = TRUE and all.x and/or all.y are
      set to TRUE.

    ? The methods package internal function .requirePackage() now calls
      requireNamespace(p) instead of require(p), hence no longer adding
      packages to the search() path in cases methods or class
      definitions are needed.  Consequently, previous workflows relying
      on the old behaviour will have to be amended by adding
      corresponding library(p) calls.

    ? More R-level messages use a common format containing "character
      string" for more consistency and less translation work.

    ? available.packages() and install.packages() get an optional
      switch cache_user_dir, somewhat experimentally.

    ? The sunspot.month data have been updated to Oct 2024; because of
      recalibration also historical numbers are changed, and we keep
      the previous data as sunspot.m2014 for reproducibility.

    ? The quartz() device now supports alpha masks.  Thanks to George
      Stagg, Gwynn Gebeyhu, Heather Turner, and Tomek Gieorgijewski.

    ? The print() method for date-time objects (POSIX.t) gets an
      optional digits argument for _fractional_ seconds, passed to
      improved format.POSIXlt(); consequently, print(<date.time>,
      digits = n) allows to print fractions of seconds.

    ? install.packages() and download.packages() download packages
      simultaneously using libcurl, significantly reducing download
      times when installing or downloading multiple packages.

    ? Status reporting in download.file() has been extended to report
      the outcome for individual files in simultaneous downloads.

    ? The Rd \link macro now allows markup in the link text when the
      topic is given by the optional argument, e.g.,
      \link[=gamma]{\eqn{\Gamma(x)}}.

    ? If La_library() is empty, sessionInfo() still reports
      La_version() when available.

    ? seq.int(from, to, by, ....) when |by| = 1 now behaves as if by
      was omitted, and hence returns from:to, possibly integer.

    ? seq.Date(from, to, by, ....) and seq.POSIXt(..)  now also work
      when from is missing and sufficient further arguments are
      provided, thanks to Michael Chirico's report, patch proposal in
      PR#17672 and ?R Dev Day? contributions.

      The Date method also works for seq(from, to), when by is missing
      and now defaults to "1 days".

      It is now documented (and tested) that the by string may be
      _abbreviated_ in both seq methods.

      Both methods return or keep internal type "integer" more
      consistently now.  Also, as.POSIXct({}) is internally integer.

    ? duplicated(), unique(), and anyDuplicated() now also work for
      class expression vectors.

    ? New function use() to use packages in R scripts with full control
      over what gets added to the search path.  (Actually already
      available since R 4.4.0.)

    ? There is some support for zstd compression of tarballs in tar()
      and untar().  (This depends on OS support of libzstd or by tar.)

    ? print(summary(<numbers>)) gets new optional argument zdigits to
      allow more flexible and consistent (double) rounding.  The
      current default zdigits = 4L is somewhat experimental.
      Specifying both digits = *, zdigits = * allows behaviour
      independent of the global digits option.

    ? The format() method for "difftime" objects gets a new back
      compatible option with.units.

    ? A summary() method for "difftime" objects which prints nicely,
      similar to those for "Date" and "POSIXct".

    ? unique()'s default method now also deals with "difftime"
objects.

    ? optimize(f, *) when f(x) is not finite says more about the value
      in its warning message.  It no longer replaces -Inf by the
      largest _positive_ finite number.

    ? The documentation of gamma() and is.numeric() is more specific,
      thanks to the contributors of PR#18677.

    ? New dataset gait thanks to Heather Turner and Ella Kaye, used in
      examples.

    ? New datasets penguins and penguins_raw thanks to Ella Kaye,
      Heather Turner, and Kristen Gorman.

    ? isSymmetric(<matrix>) gains a new option trans = "C"; when
set to
      non-default, it tests for ?simple? symmetry of complex matrices.

    ? model.frame() produces more informative error messages in some
      cases when variables in the formula are not found, thanks to Ben
      Bolker's PR#18860.

    ? selectMethod(f, ..) now keeps the function name if the function
      belongs to a group generic and the method is for the generic.

  BLAS and LAPACK:

    ? The bundled BLAS and LAPACK sources have been updated to those
      shipped as part of January 2025's LAPACK 3.12.1.

    ? It is intended that this will be the last update to BLAS and
      LAPACK in the R sources.  Those building R from source are
      encouraged to use external BLAS and LAPACK and this will be
      required in future.

    ? This update was mainly bug fixes but contained a barely
      documented major change.  The set of BLAS routines had been
      unchanged since 1988, so throughout R's history.  This update
      introduced new BLAS routines dgemmtr and zgemmtr which are now
      used by LAPACK routines.  This means that BLAS implementations
      are no longer interchangeable.

    ? To work around this, R can be configured with option
      --with-2025blas which arranges for the 2025 BLAS additions to be
      compiled into libRlapack (the internal LAPACK, not built if an
      external LAPACK is used).

      This option allows the continuation of the practice of swapping
      the BLAS in use by symlinking lib/libRblas.*.  It has the
      disadvantage of using the reference BLAS version of the 2025
      routines whereas an enhanced BLAS might have an optimized version
      (OpenBLAS does as from version 0.3.29).

    ? Windows builds currently use the internal LAPACK and by default
      the internal BLAS: notes on how to swap the latter _via_
      Rblas.dll are in file src/extra/blas/Makefile.win.

  INSTALLATION on a UNIX-ALIKE:

    ? A C23 compiler (if available) is now selected by default for
      compilation of R and packages.  R builds can opt out _via_ the
      configure flag --without-C23, unless the specified or default
      (usually gcc) compiler defaults to C23: gcc 15 will.

      A C23 compiler is known to be selected with gcc 13-15, LLVM clang
      18-20 (and 15 should), Apple clang 15-17 and Intel 2024.2-2025.0
      (and 2022.2 should).

      Current binary distributions on macOS use Apple clang 14 and so
      do not use C23.

    ? The minimum autoconf requirement for a maintainer build has been
      increased to autoconf 2.72.

    ? Building the HTML and Info versions of the R manuals now requires
      texi2any from Texinfo 6.1 or later.

    ? Failures in building the manuals under doc now abort the
      installation, removing any file which caused the failure.

    ? Control of symbol visibility is now supported on macOS (the
      previous check only worked on ELF platforms).

    ? There is now support for installing the debug symbols for
      recommended packages on macOS: see REC_INSTALL_OPT in file
      config.site.

    ? configure is now able to find an external libintl on macOS (the
      code from an older GNU gettext distribution failed to try linking
      with the macOS Core Foundation framework).

  INSTALLATION on WINDOWS:

    ? Both building R and installing packages use the C compiler in C23
      mode.

    ? R on Windows by default uses pkg-config for linking against
      external libraries.  This makes it easier to test R and packages
      with alternative toolchains (such as from Msys2, e.g., testing
      with LLVM and possibly with sanitizers). It also allows more
      significant Rtools updates within a single R minor release.

    ? The installer scripts for Windows have been tailored to Rtools45,
      an update of the Rtools44 toolchain.  It is based on GCC 14.  The
      experimental support for 64-bit ARM (aarch64) CPUs is based on
      LLVM 19.  R-devel and R 4.5.x are no longer maintained to be
      buildable using Rtools44 and it is advised to switch to Rtools45.

  DEPRECATED AND DEFUNCT:

    ? is.R() is defunct.  Environment variable _R_DEPRECATED_IS_R_ no
      longer has any effect.

    ? Deprecated (for more than 9 years!) functions linearizeMlist,
      listFromMlist, and showMlist and the "MethodsList" class for S4
      method handling were removed from package methods.  Deprecated
      functions balanceMethodsList, emptyMethodsList,
      inheritedSubMethodLists, insertMethod, insertMethodInEmptyList,
      makeMethodsList, mergeMethods, MethodsList, MethodsListSelect,
      and SignatureMethod were made defunct, as were the "MethodsList"
      branches of functions assignMethodsMetaData, finalDefaultMethod,
      and MethodAddCoerce.

    ? getMethods(*, table = TRUE) is deprecated.

    ? Building with the bundled (and old) version of libintl is
      deprecated and now gives a configure warning.  This should be
      selected only if neither the OS's libc (as on GNU Linux) nor an
      external libintl library provide suitable functions.

      Instead install libintl from a recent version of GNU gettext
      (available for macOS) or use configure option --disable-nls.

      The ability to use the bundled version may be removed as soon as
      R 4.5.1.

    ? The deprecated xfig() graphics device has been removed.

  PACKAGE INSTALLATION:

    ? Packages are now installed using C23 where supported by the OS
      and R build.

      Packages using R's compiler settings can ask *not* to use C23
      _via_ including USE_C17 in SystemRequirements or can be installed
      by R CMD INSTALL --use-C17.  (Some packages ignore these settings
      in their configure script or when compiling in sub-directories of
      src, as will those using a src/Makefile.)

    ? Source installs now report the package version in the log.

    ? There is preliminary support for C++26 with GCC >= 14, Apple
      clang++ >= 16 and LLVM clang++ >= 17.

  C-LEVEL FACILITIES:

    ? The non-API and hidden entry points Rf_setIVector, Rf_setRVector
      and Rf_setSVector have been removed.

    ? The internal code for changing the parent of an environment now
      signals an error if the new parent is not an environment or if
      the change would create a cycle in the parent chain.

    ? SET_TYPEOF now signals an error unless the old and new types have
      compatible memory structure and content. Use of SET_TYPE in
      package C code should be avoided and may be deprecated in the
      near future. It is better to allocate an object of the desired
      type in the first place.

    ? The set of LAPACK (double and complex) routines declared in the
      headers R_ext/Lapack.h and R_ext/Applic.h has been extended,
      mostly to routines actually in use by packages.

    ? Memory allocation messages now use the (non-SI notation) "Mb",
      "Gb" , ..., and "Mbytes" strings as _arguments_
instead of as
      part of the (translatable format) string.  This is one step for
      PR#18297; from Henrik Bengtsson.

    ? Header R_ext/Constants.h (included by R.h) now always includes
      header float.h or cfloat for constants such as DBL_MAX.

    ? Strict R headers are now the default.  This removes the legacy
      definitions of PI, Calloc, Realloc and Free: use M_PI, R_Calloc,
      R_Realloc or R_Free instead.

    ? The deprecated and seemingly never-used S-compatibility macros
      F77_COM and F77_COMDECL have been removed from header R_ext/RS.h.

    ? The enum Rboolean defined in header R_ext/Boolean.h now has a
      fixed underlying type of int on platforms whose C compiler
      supports this.

      This is a C23 feature (taken from C++11) and also supported in
      all C standards by some versions of clang (from LLVM and Apple)
      and (with a warning when using -pedantic) by GCC when in C17
      mode.

      A fair amount of code has assumed this: it may be changed to a
      smaller type in future.  In particular, as standard compilers do
      not check the validity of assignment to an enum, it has been
      possible to assign NA_INTEGER to an Rboolean variable, coerce it
      to int and recover the value.

      If there were a platform which used an underlying type of a
      different size this would be an ABI-breaking change (but we are
      unaware of any such platform).

    ? Header R_ext/Boolean.h now ensures that a bool type is available
      either as a keyword (C23 and C++) or by including the C99 header
      stdbool.h.  This is being used internally in R to replace
      Rboolean by bool.

    ? There are new functions asRboolean and asBool, variants of
      asLogical more suited to converting logical arguments to Rboolean
      or to bool. They require a length-one input and throw an error if
      that evaluates to NA.

    ? Header R_exts/Error.h now ensures that Rf_error and similar are
      given a noreturn attribute when used from C++ under all
      compilers.

    ? Header R_exts/Utils.h no longer contains a declaration for
      F77_SUB(interv).  This is intended to be called from Fortran and
      was wrongly declared: LOGICAL in Fortran corresponds to int * not
      Rboolean *.

    ? Defining R_INCLUDE_BOOLEAN_H to 0 before including headers R.h or
      Rinternals.h (or any other header which includes R_ext/Boolean.h)
      stops the inclusion of header R_ext/Boolean.h which `defines'
      constants TRUE, FALSE, true, false and the type bool which some
      package maintainers wish to avoid.

      Note that the last three are keywords in C23 and C++11 so cannot
      be avoided entirely.  However, with commonly-used compilers they
      can be masked by a macro of the same name, often with a warning.

  C-LEVEL API:

    ? The ?Writing R Extensions? Texinfo source now contains very
      experimental annotations for more clearly identifying the API
      status of C entry points. These annotations are used to produce
      indices for API, experimental API, and embedded API entry points
      in the rendered versions.  This is very preliminary and may be
      dropped if a better approach emerges.

      Also for Fortran-callable entry points which are part of the API.

    ? ?Writing R Extensions? has a new section ?Moving into C API
      compliance? to help package authors move away from using non-API
      endpoints. This section will continue to be updated as work on
      clarifying and tightening the C API continues.

    ? New API function R_mkClosure. This checks that its arguments are
      valid and should be used instead of allocSExp(CLOSXP followed by
      SET_FORMALS, SET_BODY, and SET_CLOENV.

    ? New API functions R_ClosureFormals, R_ClosureBody, and
      R_ClosureEnv for extracting closure components.  The existing
      functions R_ClosureExpr and R_BytecodeExpr have also been added
      to the API.

    ? New API function R_ParentEnv corresponding to R's parent.env().

    ? Further non-API entry points have been added to those reported by
      R CMD check: COMPLEX0, ddfind, DDVAL, ENSURE_NAMEDMAX, ENVFLAGS,
      FRAME, HASHTAB, INTERNAL, IS_ASCII, IS_UTF8, LEVELS, NAMED,
      PRSEEN, RDEBUG, REAL0, Rf_findVarInFrame3, SET_BODY, SET_CLOENV,
      SET_FORMALS, SET_PRSEEN, SET_RDEBUG, STRING_PTR, SYMVALUE, and
      VECTOR_PTR. Any declarations for these in public header files
      will be removed in the near future, and they will be hidden where
      possible.

    ? Some R CMD check NOTEs on the use of non-API entry points have
      been upgraded to WARNINGs in preparation for removing
      declarations and, where possible, hiding these entry points.

    ? Additional non-API entry points have been added to those reported
      by R CMD check: IS_LONG_VEC, PRCODE, PRENV, PRVALUE, R_nchar,
      Rf_NonNullStringMatch, R_shallow_duplicate_attr, Rf_StringBlank,
      SET_TYPEOF, TRUELENGTH, XLENGTH_EX, and XTRUELENGTH.

    ? Enable defining R_NO_REMAP_RMATH and calling Rf_*() as has been
      documented in ?Writing R Extensions? for a while, fixing PR#18800
      thanks to Mikael Jagan and Suharto Anggono.

    ? R_GetCurrentSrcref(skip) now skips calls rather than srcrefs,
      consistent with counting items in the traceback() display.  If
      skip == NA_INTEGER, it searches for the first srcref, starting at
      the current evaluation state and proceeding through the call
      stack; otherwise, it returns the srcref of the requested entry
      from the call stack.

  UTILITIES:

    ? R CMD INSTALL (and hence check) now compile C++ code with
      -DR_NO_REMAP.

      ?Writing R Extensions? has been revised to describe the remapped
      entry points, for with the Rf_ prefix remains optional when used
      from C code (but is recommended for new C code).

    ? R CMD check --as-cran notes bad parts in the DESCRIPTION file's
      URL fields.

    ? R CMD check now reports more warnings on long-deprecated/obsolete
      Fortran features reported by gfortran -Wall.  For hints on how to
      modernize these, see
      <https://fortranwiki.org/fortran/show/Modernizing+Old+Fortran>.

    ? Since almost all supported R versions now use UTF-8, R CMD check
      no longer by default reports on marked UTF-8 or Latin-1 strings
      in character data.  Set environment variable
      _R_CHECK_PACKAGE_DATASETS_SUPPRESS_NOTES_ to a false value for
      the previous behaviour.

    ? tools::checkDocFiles() notes more cases of usage documentation
      without corresponding \alias.

    ? R CMD check with a true value for environment variable
      _R_CHECK_BASHISMS_ checks more thoroughly, including for bash
      scripts and bashisms in components of autoconf-generated
      configure scripts.

    ? R CMD check gains option --run-demo to check demo scripts
      analogously to tests.  This includes a check for undeclared
      package dependencies: it can also be enabled separately by
      setting the environment variable _R_CHECK_PACKAGES_USED_IN_DEMO_
      to a true value (as done by R CMD check --as-cran).

    ? R CMD build now supports --compression=zstd on platforms with
      sufficient support for zstd.

    ? tools::texi2pdf(..., texinputs=<paths>) now _pre_pends the
      specified <paths> to TEXINPUTS.  When building R itself
      (doc/NEWS.pdf and base vignettes) or package manuals using R CMD
      Rd2pdf, it is ensured that this R's Rd.sty takes precedence over
      any other (incompatible) versions in default ?texmf trees?.

    ? tools::Rd2latex() no longer outputs an \inputencoding{utf8} line
      by default; such a declaration is obsolete since LaTeX
      2018-04-01.

  BUG FIXES:

    ? update_pkg_po() now copies .mo files to the translation package
      even if a DESCRIPTION file exists, thanks to Michael Chirico
      fixing PR#18694.

    ? Auto-generated citation() entries no longer include (additional)
      URLs in the note field (PR#18547).

    ? as.data.frame.list() gets a new option new.names and now
      preserves NA names, thus fixing the format() method for data
      frames, and also bug PR#18745.  Relatedly, the format() method
      gets an option cut.names.

    ? stem() formats correctly also in cases where rounding up, e.g.,
      from 9.96 to 10 needs more digits; thanks to Ella Kaye and Kelly
      Bodwin, fixing PR#8934 during ?R Dev Day? at useR!2024.

      Additionally, stem(x) now works normally also when length(x) =      1.

    ? tools' toTitleCase() now works better, fixing PR#18674, thanks to
      Shannon Pileggi, Sarah Zeller, Reiko Okamoto, and Hugo Gruson's
      ?R Dev Day? effort.

    ? Printing matrices (typically with many rows and or columns) now
      also omits columns when desirable according to option max.print,
      or argument max, respectively.  This is primarily the work of
      Lorena Abad, Ekaterina Akimova, Hanne Oberman, Abhishek Ulayil,
      and Lionel Henry at the ?R Dev Day?, thus fixing PR#15027.

    ? Sys.setLanguage() now warns about _some_ failures to change the
      language.

    ? Printing ls.str() now shows "<missing>" even when R's
language
      setting is not English.

    ? xyTable() now handles and reports NAs fixing PR#18654.  Thanks to
      Heather Turner and Zhian Kamvar for report and patch.

    ? as(*, "raw") now works as documented, thanks to Mikael
Jagan's
      PR#18795.

    ? Informational messages of e.g., print(1:1e4, max=1000), now
      correctly mention max in addition to getOption("max.print").

    ? rowSums(A, dims = dd), colMeans(..), etc, give a more helpful
      error message when dd is not of length one, thanks to Michael
      Chirico's PR#18811.

    ? seq.Date() no longer explicitly coerces results from integer to
      double, analogously with seq.default(), seq.int() and
      seq.POSIXt(), resolving a _modified_ PR#18782.

    ? axisTicks(usr, ...) documentation clarification for log = TRUE,
      fixing bug PR#18821 thanks to Duncan Murdoch.

    ? debug() and debugonce(fun) now also accept a string fun when it
      names an S4 generic, fixing PR#18822 thanks to Mikael Jagan.

    ? debugonce(<S4-simple-body>, signature=*) now works correctly when
      ?called twice?, fixing PR#18824 thanks to Mikael Jagan.

    ? format(dtime, digits=* / format=*) is more consistent when the
      POSIXt date-time object dtime has fractional (non integer)
      seconds.  Fixes PR#17350, thanks to new contributions by LatinR's
      ?R Dev Day? participants, Heather Turner and Dirk Eddelbuettel;
      also fixes more cases, notably when format contains "

    ? options(scipen = NULL) and other invalid values now signal an
      error instead of invalidating ops relying on a finite integer
      value.  Values outside the range -9 .. 9999 are now warned about
      and set to a boundary or to the default 0, e.g., in case of an
      NA.

    ? cbind() could segfault with NULL inputs.  (Seen when R was built
      with gcc-14, LTO and C99 inlining semantics.)

    ? Fix segfault on quartz() from grid.glyph() call with glyphInfo()
      that describes non-existent font (PR#18784).  Thanks to Tomek
      Gieorgijewski.

    ? format() etc, using decimal.mark = s, by default getting s <-
      getOption("OutDec"), signals a warning (to become an error in
the
      future) when s is not a string with exactly one character.

    ? When s <- getOption("OutDec") is not a string of one
character, a
      warning is signalled now whenever it is used in internal C code,
      notably when calling the default methods of format().

    ? pwilcox() and qwilcox() now check for user interrupt less
      frequently.

    ? summary(<stl>) (which prints directly) finally gets the same
      digits default as the formatting printing of default summary()
      method results, and it is documented explicitly.

    ? options(show.error.locations = TRUE) once again shows the most
      recent known location when an error is reported.  Setting its
      value to "bottom" is no longer supported.  Numerical values are
      converted to logical.

    ? C API function R_GetCurrentSrcref(skip) now returns srcref
      entries correctly.  (Note that there is also a change to the
      interpretation of skip; see the C-LEVEL API entry above.)

    ? tools::Rd2latex() now removes leading and trailing spaces from
      \alias entries as documented, fixing indexing and linking hiccups
      in some PDF manuals.

    ? R CMD Rd2pdf can now render the package manual from a --latex
      installation also when the help contains figures.

    ? The argument of as.environment() is now named x, not object, as
      was always documented and shown when printing it; thanks to Gael
      Millot's PR#18849.

    ? When R CMD check aims at getting the time+date from a world
      clock, it is more robust against unexpected non-error results,
      thanks to Michael Chirico's PR#18852.

    ? The tools::parseLatex() parser made several parsing errors
      (PR#18855).

    ? Error messages produced by tools::parseLatex() are now more
      readable (PR#18855).

    ? R CMD build <pkg> excludes more file patterns when it tars the
      <pkg> directory, fixing both PR#18432 and PR#18434, for vim and
      GNU Global emacs users, thanks to Dirk Eddelbuettel's patch.

    ? quantile()'s default method gets an option fuzz to protect
      against floating point inaccuracy before rounding, thus fixing
      PR#15811 and, en passant, PR#17683.

    ? Printing arrays now also omits columns, rows and slices when
      desirable according to option max.print, or argument max,
      respectively, addressing most of the remaining part of PR#15027,
      thanks to Sherry Zhang's patch.

    ? drop.terms(y ~ w, 1) and similar now work, thanks to Benjamin
      Sommer's report in PR#18861 and collaboration with Heather Turner
      improving reformulate().

    ? Many arguments which should be length-1 logical are checked more
      thoroughly.  The most commonly seen errors are in unlink(,
      recursive), tempdir() and the na.rm arguments of max(), min(),
      sum(), ....

      grep(), strsplit() and similar took non-TRUE/FALSE values of
      their logical arguments as FALSE, but these were almost always
      mismatches to unnamed arguments and are now reported as NA.

    ? vignette("reshape") is now also available on Windows.

    ? trace(coerce, ..) now works correctly, fixing PR#18823 thanks to
      Mikael Jagan.

    ? R CMD check now also reports bad symbols in package shared
      objects linked in from local static libraries (PR#18789).

    ? factanal() now works correctly also, e.g., for GPArotation,
      oblimin() rotations, fixing PR#18417, thanks to Coen Bernaards
      and others.

    ? Setting attributes on primitive functions is deprecated now and
      already an error in the development version of R.  Changing the
      environment of a primitive does no longer happen and signals a
      warning.

--
Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Phone: (+45)38153501
Office: A 4.23
Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com