Hi, Anatoly.

I don�t believe there is a mechanism to maintain two versions of a data package 
in a single Bioconductor release.

Consider refactoring your database to expose versioned views to the user rather 
than tables. All end-user data in the database are exposed as �versioned views� 
(create view as �) of the underlying database tables. The database can then 
store any tables you like and you just need to ensure that v1_�. and v2_� do 
not ever change the information returned to the user. If you add more tables or 
information in the future, ensure that the v1_� and v2_� return the same 
information as before, but you can move on to v3_�.

In this way, the �data� are versioned by the package version (the information 
in the backing tables is versioned by the database file), but the schema are 
versioned inside the database. Of course, you can write your R code, then, to 
check that the database contains the correct version to ensure that a user 
doesn�t try to use an old version that doesn�t have the correctly versioned 
views. If there is R code meant for v2, it will work for all future versions of 
the database, but R code written for v4 will not work with a database (perhaps 
a historical copy) that doesn�t have v4 views; this would allow a user to run 
code using the �old� database and repeat the code using the �new� database with 
new data with the code being unchanged.

There are, of course, other approaches to consider. Happy to discuss further�.

Sean

From: Bioc-devel <bioc-devel-boun...@r-project.org> on behalf of Anatoly 
Sorokin <lpto...@gmail.com>
Date: Tuesday, August 19, 2025 at 10:46
To: bioc-devel@r-project.org <bioc-devel@r-project.org>
Subject: [Bioc-devel] New database for AnnotationData package

Hi,

I have a question: we have developed the new version of the database
for our synaptome.data/synaptome.db packages. This version has a
different API and an extended set of data; however, we would like to
preserve access to the old database because some results would look
different between versions.

Is it possible to keep the old version of the package in the new
release, together with the new one? If not, what would be the
Bioconductor policy about this?

Cheers,
Anatoly

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