[R-pkg-team] Bug#1040515: adds unnecessarily strict versioned Depends on r-base-core

[Sébastien Villemot]

Package: dh-r
Version: 20230121
Severity: normal

dh-r adds "r-base-core (>= $VERSION)" in Depends, where VERSION is the one
which was used at build time.

Since dh-r already adds pseudo-packages in Depends that are meant to track ABI
changes (r-api-*, r-graphics-engine-*), adding such a versioned depends on
r-base-core is not needed in general, and actually creates a unnecessarily
strict restriction.

For example, if the version in r-base is more recent in unstable than in
testing, and assuming that the ABI has not changed between those two versions,
then a R addon built in unstable won’t be able to migrate to testing before
r-base does, while there is no reason to forbid this. In particular, this can
be a problem during freeze (see the discussion in #1035428 for an instance of
this).

Fixing this issue is probably just a matter of modifying the following line:
https://salsa.debian.org/r-pkg-team/dh-r/-/blob/master/dh/R.pm#L272

See also the discussion in #1040001.

--
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀  Sébastien Villemot
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁  Debian Developer
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀  https://sebastien.villemot.name
⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀  https://www.debian.org