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If all the world were a monorepo

(jtibs.substack.com)
207 points sebg | 2 comments | 16 Sep 25 08:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.405s | source
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maxbond ◴[20 Sep 25 01:58 UTC] No.45309393[source]▶
> When declaring dependencies, most packages don’t specify any version requirements, and if they do, it’s usually just a lower bound like ‘grf >= 1.0’.

I like the perspective presented in this article, I think CRAN is taking an interesting approach. But this is nuts and bolts. Explicitly saying you're compatible with any future breaking changes!? You can't possibly know that!

I get that a lot of R programmers might be data scientists first and programmers second, so many of them probably don't know semver, but I feel like the language should guide them to a safe choice here. If CRAN is going to email you about reverse dependencies, maybe publishing a package with a crazy semver expression should also trigger an email.

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1. remus ◴[20 Sep 25 07:08 UTC] No.45311164[source]▶
> Explicitly saying you're compatible with any future breaking changes!? You can't possibly know that!

I kind of like it in a way. In a lot of eco systems it's easy for package publishers to be a bit lazy with compatibility which can push a huge amount of work on package consumers. R seems similar to go in this regard, where there is a big focus on not breaking compatibility which then means they are conservative about adding new stuff until they're happy to support it for a long time.

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2. maxbond ◴[20 Sep 25 07:53 UTC] No.45311364[source]▶
I guess it wouldn't bother me if it weren't a semver expression. As a semver expression it's ridiculous on it's face, a breaking release will break your code until proven otherwise. "foo >= 2024R1", well, I'm not entirely comfortable with it but if you've got a comprehensive plan to address the potential dangers (as CRAN appears to), godspeed.