This is a breaking changes release that ends support to
sp object in favour of more modern interfaces
(sf and terra). Although that sp
is still available on CRAN, it is no longer being actively developed
(https://geocompx.org/post/2023/rgdal-retirement/). This is the main
reason that motivated the choice to transition toward sf
(the default) and terra.
Users can choose either get an sf or
SpatVector using the returnclass argument:
ne_countries(returnclass = "sf")
ne_countries(returnclass = "sv")Affected functions are ne_countries(),
ne_coastline(), ne_states(),
ne_load() and ne_download().
If changing the return type to sf creates too many
problems to your existing code, you can still convert it back to
sp :
countries <- ne_countries(returnclass = "sf")
# option 1
sf::as_Spatial(countries)
# option 2
as(countries, "Spatial")More information about the retirement of rgdal,
rgeos and maptools:
https://r-spatial.org/r/2022/04/12/evolution.html
Using lifecycle to indicate that support of
sp object will be eventually dropped. Users should now use
ne_download(returnclass = "sf"), instead of
ne_download(returnclass = "sp").
terra is now included in the Imports
section.
Added new maintainer and contributors (#62).
Using terra over raster (#63)
Fixes broken data download links.