CRAN failure with upcoming changes to `utils::packageVersion()`

[simonpcouch]

A note on upcoming changes to packageVersion() from CRAN folks needs changes submitted soon. With the change "Have packageVersion() warn if not found and always return a (possibly NA) numeric version," they see:

packages are no longer installable because their startup code assumes that
packageVersion() throws an error in the not found case, and hence e.g.

should_register_tune_args_method <- tryCatch(
expr = utils::packageVersion("tune") >= "0.1.6.9001",
error = function(cnd) TRUE
)
if (should_register_tune_args_method) {
...

no longer works as intended.

...

We thus reverted the change for the time being, but can you please
change your package code to work with the documented behavior of
packageVersion()?

Personally, I would use something like

should_register_tune_args_method <-
(nzchar(system.file(package = "tune")) &&
utils::packageVersion("tune") >= "0.1.6.9001")

We would very much appreciate if you could make the changes as quickly
as possible.

[DavisVaughan]

I'd consider just removing this entirely now that the version of tune we are checking for has been out for around a year

If people report issues you can just tell them to update their packages

[simonpcouch]

Making public part of a discussion with @hfrick: after poking around blames for a moment, I'm convinced that we could register these in the usual way! It does seem like the only reason they were registered via s3_register() in the past is because of the tune migration part—when they were in tune beforehand, they were registered in the usual way.

[github-actions]

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