Hi devels,
I’d be interested in contributing and learning through the ropenSci community. I’ve never contributed to any open source project before, nor a full-stack developer, too.
I was wondering how to maintain platform.
Say, I use unix, R 3.5. But, for instance taxize I understand is on R 3.6, OSX.
Of course I can move to OSX, but R version is something I’m bothered about.
Thanking you in advance.
Hello @sariya,
Good to hear you’re interested in rOpenSci.
In general, it’s important to use the most up to date version of R and any packages you’re using.
This is a great post to consult when you have questions: Where to get help with your R question? · Maëlle's R Blog
Cheers
I’ve doubt not specific to any repository but in general for R versions. Sorry, don’t know who and where to ask otherwise. Say, for example, a library XX is built on R 3.5.3.
However, I’ve R v3.5.0, R v3.6 and R v4.0. If I’d like to participate in any open source coding or enhancements/bugs, pull requests how does it work in general? For example, if I code on R3.6 is that acceptable?
Thanks for your questions @sariya
The only thing R version matters for when installing a package is the minimum R version specified in the DESCRIPTION file, e.g., for taxize it is R v3.2.1 https://github.com/ropensci/taxize/blob/393b71714fbace9088254dc732e28eeb0cfad5cc/DESCRIPTION#L73-L74 - that’s just a minimum version, so any R version greater than that is fine.
CRAN builds binaries of packages for oldrel, release and devel, which has R versions associated, right now they’re 3.6, 4.0, and 4.1. I don’t know exactly how those work, but I assume when you install a package, the install.packages code downloads the appropriate one closest to the version you have, but not sure if that;s right.
In general I’d suggest using the latest stable R version (v4.0.2), that’s what I do. Unless you have a good reason to use an older R version, for example if you have a project that you don’t want to upgrade because for example it only works with older versions of some packages.
It may or may not matter, depending on the situation. In general as I said above I’d stick with using the latest stable R version. If you need to use an older version just be aware that some things change between R versions. For example in I think R v4 and greater stringsAsFactors in data.frame’s is by default FALSE, whereas before v4 it was TRUE, so that can lead to different results if you’re contributing to a package and using v3x where others are using v4x. Another example is raw strings, introduced in R v4.
Thanks for that response @sckott!
enhancements/bugs, pull requests
@sariya, after looking into details of the package to which you want to contribute (e.g. contributing guide for taxize), it’s a good idea to connect with the author to ask how they like to communicate with new contributors.
The only thing R version matters for when installing a package is the minimum R version specified in the DESCRIPTION file, e.g., for taxize it is R v3.2.1
Yea, that was I was thinking, but couldn’t confirm else where.
In general as I said above I’d stick with using the latest stable R version.`
I see, I’d go ahead with the latest.
it’s a good idea to connect with the author to ask how they like to communicate with new contributors.
That makes sense. I’ll definitely do the suggested~
Thank you very much for your kind replies. 
cheers!