[R-package] latest {Matrix} requires R>=4.4.0

[jameslamb]

Description

{Matrix} v1.7-0 went up on CRAN 3 days ago. It has this in its DESCRIPTION.

Depends: R (>= 4.4.0)

https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/Matrix/index.html

That is the latest release of R, released just 5 days ago (release notes)

As a result, trying to install and load {lightgbm} in an R 4.3.3 environment raises a warning.

remove.packages(c("lightgbm", "Matrix"))
install.packages("lightgbm", repos = "https://cran.r-project.org")
# Warning: dependency ‘Matrix’ is not available

And trying to load it fails.

library(lightgbm)
# Error: package or namespace load failed for ‘lightgbm’ in loadNamespace(j <- i[[1L]], c(lib.loc, .libPaths()), versionCheck = vI[[j]]):
# there is no package called ‘Matrix’

This is breaking this project's CI, and will make install.packages("lightgbm") no longer work on older R versions without some manual work to install {Matrix}.

Reproducible example

See any of LightGBM's recent R-package CI jobs or the code snippets I supplied above.

In R 4.3 CI jobs:

Warning message:
package ‘Matrix’ is not available for this version of R
‘Matrix’ version 1.7-0 is in the repositories but depends on R (>= 4.4.0)
‘Matrix’ version 1.7-0 is in the repositories but depends on R (>= 4.5)

A version of this package for your version of R might be available elsewhere,
see the ideas at
https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-patched/R-admin.html#Installing-packages 

In R 3.6 CI jobs:

Warning message:
package ‘Matrix’ is not available (for R version 3.6.3) 
* checking for file ‘/__w/LightGBM/LightGBM/lightgbm_r/DESCRIPTION’ ... OK
* preparing ‘lightgbm’:
* checking DESCRIPTION meta-information ... OK
* cleaning src
* installing the package to build vignettes
      -----------------------------------
ERROR: dependency ‘Matrix’ is not available for package ‘lightgbm’

Environment info

Latest LightGBM, R <4.4.0.

Additional Comments

From "Installing Packages" in "Writing R Extenstions" (link)

*Something which sometimes puzzles users is that install.packages() may report that a package which they believe should be available is not found. Some possible reasons:
...

• The package is available, but not for the current version of R or for the type of OS (Unix/Windows).

If the package depends on a version of R later than the one in use, it is possible that an earlier version is available which will work with your version of R: for CRAN look for ‘Old sources’ on the package’s CRAN landing page and manually retrieve an appropriate version (of comparable age to your version of R).