[R-pkg-team] Bug#961992: Should r-cran-knitr dependency on node-highlight.js be a Recommends?

[Steve Langasek]

Package: r-cran-knitr
Version: 1.28+dfsg-2
Severity: minor
User: ubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
Usertags: origin-ubuntu groovy

Dear maintainers,

As part of the R 4.0 transition in Ubuntu, I've noticed that r-cran-knitr
has a transitive dependency on nodejs via node-highlight.js.  This was
noticed because previously a buggy package that had a wrong Provides: nodejs
in the archive was built on riscv64, allowing various packages which
depended on but did not actually require nodejs to build; but this has now
been fixed, which means that since there is no nodejs package on riscv64 due
to bootstrapping, a certain chunk of the R packages are not rebuildable on
riscv64.

I wonder if r-cran-knitr really requires this javascript package at runtime
for its functionality, or if perhaps this should be made a Recommends
instead?  Having unnecessary dependencies between packages implemented in
different non-"core" languages is certainly a challenge for bootstrapping of
new ports.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                   https://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org
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