[SPARK-26014] Deprecate R < 3.4 support

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 3.0.0
• Fix Version/s: 3.0.0
• Component/s: SparkR
• Labels: release-notes
• Target Version/s: 3.0.0
• Docs Text: Versions of R before 3.4 are deprecated in Spark 3.0.0.
• Assignee: Hyukjin Kwon
• Reporter: Hyukjin Kwon
• Created: 12/Nov/18 05:08
• Updated: 12/Dec/22 18:10
• Resolved: 15/Nov/18 09:21

Description

See http://apache-spark-developers-list.1001551.n3.nabble.com/discuss-SparkR-CRAN-feasibility-check-server-problem-td25605.html

R version. 3.1.x is too old. It's released 4.5 years ago.
R 3.4.0 is released 1.5 years ago. Considering the timing for Spark 3.0, deprecating lower versions, bumping up R to 3.4 might be reasonable option.

It should be good to deprecate and drop < R 3.4 support.

If we think about the practice, nothing particular is required within R codes as far as I can tell.
We will just upgrade Jenkins's R version to 3.4, which mean we're not going to test 3.1 R version (but instead we will test 3.4).

Issue Links

• is related to: SPARK-32073 Drop R < 3.5 support
• links to: [Github] Pull Request #23012 (HyukjinKwon)