Screw you too, Github

ERROR: We're doing an SSH key audit. 

Reason: legacy key automatically unverified

I could generate a new key ... or I could just stop using Github. Those projects are all unpaid, anyways.

brittleR

Apparently the current crop of R developers was never told the standard policy of never break backwards compatibility on a minor version increment.

Put simply, packages available for 3.3 do not work in 3.4. I'm sure there is some perfectly justifiable reason for making the release 3.4 instead of 4.0, while breaking all existing packages (until manually updated by the maintainers), but guess what: it's bollocks. 

Anyways, to forestall a long rant about disregarding long-held policy due to historical ignorance (*cough* Uber), here is how to downgrade 3.4 to 3.3 on Debian:

1. add stretch to /etc/apt/sources.list
        deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stretch main non-free contrib
        deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stretch main non-free contrib
 2.  apt-get update
     apt-cache showpkg r-base should show version 3.3.3-1
 3. apt-get remove r-base r-base-core r-base-html r-base-dev
 4. go to https://packages.debian.org/stretch/r-base-html to get version number (3.3.3-1)
     also https://packages.debian.org/stretch/r-recommended for version numbers for dependencies
  5. now do the big install:
    sudo apt-get install r-base=3.3.3-1 r-base-core=3.3.3-1 \
         r-recommended=3.3.3-1 r-base-dev=3.3.3-1 r-base-html=3.3.3-1 \
         r-cran-boot=1.3-18-2 r-cran-class=7.3-14-1 r-cran-cluster=2.0.5-1 \
         r-cran-codetools=0.2-15-1 r-cran-foreign=0.8.67-1 \
         r-cran-kernsmooth=2.23-15-2 r-cran-lattice=0.20-34-1 \
         r-cran-mass=7.3-45-1 r-cran-matrix=1.2-7.1-1 r-cran-mgcv=1.8-16-1 \
         r-cran-nlme=3.1.129-1 r-cran-nnet=7.3-12-1 r-cran-rpart=4.1-10-2 \
         r-cran-spatial=7.3-11-1 r-cran-survival=2.40-1-1
  6. prevent R from updating again, because its developers obviously cannot be trusted:
         sudo sudo apt-mark hold r-base r-base-core
  7. comment out the lines in sources.list for step 1

In related news, here is how to downgrade an R package to a specific version number. The example uninstalls the package 'BH' and replaces it with version 1.62.0. As with most package management in R these days, you need the devtools package installed.

remove.packages('BH')
library(devtools)
install_version('BH', '1.62.0')