R 4.4.0 will be released on April 24 (following the long established pattern of annual 'a.b.0' releases). As is common, nightlies (as alpha, betas, rc) have been made available for four weeks leading up to it. I uploaded a first beta release r-base_4.3.3.20240409-1 to 'experimental' a week ago, I just followed up with a rc release r-base_4.3.3.20240416-1. (The date is the commit date, the tar.gz sources are updated nightly.)
There is no documented (or anticipated) API change (see the doc/NEWS file, I also followed up with upstream to double-check) so the virtual tag can stay at r-api-4.0, the tag we have used since R 4.0.0. The graphics API (affecting graphics devices) also did not change and remains at 16 so the (auto-generated) tag remains at r-graphics-engine-16. Given these non-changes, I do not think we need a formal transition. If the release teams thinks otherwise, please let me know, ideally before April 24. Cheers, Dirk -- dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | e...@debian.org
