Aridhia DRE R Maintenance Policy

Available versions of R

Aridhia Workspaces will support up to three versions of R at a time to be used with the native R Console and Shiny apps. We will update to the latest available version every 6 months meaning that we will support a version of R for 18 months. Upgrades will normally be made in January and July. We do not support a policy of running all major versions of R, we will use the latest version available when we are due to introduce a new version, e.g. we may skip version 4.0 and release 4.2.3 when we upgrade. An example is shown below.

Marking versions as deprecated

The oldest version of R will be marked as deprecated. It is the responsibility of workspace users to upgrade their apps and scripts away from this version when it is marked for retirement. Aridhia suggest that the latest version of R should be used in order to prolong the life of apps and scripts and minimise the number of times that upgrades must be performed. Aridhia cannot be held responsible for non-working apps or scripts which depend on a version of R which was marked as deprecated and subsequently removed from production. Aridhia will post a banner in the workspaces before the removal of the deprecated version; this will typically be done with two releases (four weeks) notice of the removal of the deprecated version.

Default Version

The default version of R can be used by apps or in the R Console when no other version of R is selected by the user. Aridhia will maintain a default version of R which the R Console and Shiny apps will run on if no other version is selected by the user. The default version will be set and maintained for 12 months and may not be the latest available. When the default version is marked as “Deprecated” the newest version of R will be made the default. This will be clearly marked in the R Console side bar. See below for an example. Other versions can be selected using the dropdown on the side bar when starting a console session or by setting the version in the .version file for a shiny app; see The Shiny Apps and R Versions section in https://knowledgebase.aridhia.io/workspaces/analysing-data/mini-apps/customising-an-existing-shiny-app for more information.

As an example

(Note: the version numbers below are used as an example and are not an accurate representation of the R release schedule or its numbering)

In Jan year 1 Aridhia will support:

• Version 1 (Deprecated)
• Version 1.1
• Version 2.0 (Default)

In July year 1:

• Version 1.1 (Deprecated)
• Version 2.0 (default)
• Version 2.6

In Jan Year 2

• Version 2.0 (Deprecated)
• Version 2.6      
• Version 3.0 (Default)

In July Year 2

• Version 2.6 (Deprecated)
• Version 3.0 (default)
• Version 3.4

R Studio and Jupyter notebook

Aridhia will endeavour to maintain one version of R in our containerised apps; R Studio and Jupyter Notebook. The version of R which runs in Jupyter and R Studio will be updated every 6 months and will be kept in line with the newest version of R which is available in the native tools as far as is possible. The version of the app which runs is independent of the version of R which runs within the app. Aridhia constantly monitors its apps and will update the version as required; at a minimum we will update the version alongside the version of R; every 6 months.

All of the above information is subject to change by the Aridhia team at any time.