Phase out rgdal dependency (Imports:)?

[MikkoVihtakari]

I am trying to install ggOceanMaps to a Centos 7 server. My package depends on ggspatial, which depends on rosm, which depends on rgdal, which is to be phased out by the end of 2023.

I manage to install sf, terra and stars (after playing with symlinks), but cannot manage to install rgdal. While the installation issue is not relevant here, I wonder 1) whether rosm rgdal dependencies could be replaced by sf and 2) whether ggspatial dependency on rosm is entirely necessary?

I understand that making the shift from sp/rgdal to sf is a lot of work and have not managed to implement that to my package yet. I also see the rosm is making the tiles you have in ggspatial tutorial. Any thoughts how to solve these dependency issues?

[paleolimbot]

I definitely would like to do a major update to rosm to swap the rgdal/sp stack to stars/sf (because that's what ggspatial uses and it's only one gdal installation). There are a few larger issues in rosm, which is a package I wrote a long time ago, that need modernizing, and I'd like to tackle them all together. In particular, I'm hoping to use a package I've been developing to help with the referencing ( https://github.com/paleolimbot/grd ), which is on the backburner as I work on some more pressing maintenance (s2 mostly).

[MikkoVihtakari]

Any progress on this front? I see that you write on README that the package might be retired. Any way removing the rosm dependency from ggspatial, or moving it to suggests? Or replacing it with a more modern package?

This issue makes it difficult to run ggspatial (and ggOceanMaps) on certain servers...

Not really expecting you to do this, since we all are busy and this is volunteer work. Just posing questions mostly. I probably could move ggspatial to suggests in ggOceanMaps, if I finished the transfer to sf. That change will break the old versions of the package and make things backwards incompatible, but it has to be done at some point. I just have not had time to finish the implementation.

[paleolimbot]

Totally still on the radar! The plan is to use the new bits that were just added into the wk package (the "grd" class) to speed up rosm (or maybe that will live directly in ggspatial). It's the next thing I plan to work on in R maintenance land, although with two kids that tends to take a while!

[MikkoVihtakari]

Thank you :) Your efforts are much appreciated and you are very valuable for the community. No stress, we do things when we do things. Just asked because I encountered this issue again...