This blog is updated daily.
A general description is here.
(Unix-alike) The default method for ‘download.file()’ and ‘url()’ now chooses ‘"libcurl"’ except for ‘file://’ URLs. There will be small changes in the format and wording of messages, including in rare cases if an issue is a warning or an error.
Those who use proxies should check that their settings are compatible (see ‘?download.file’: the most commonly used forms work for both methods ‘"internal"’ and ‘"libcurl"’).
Matrix products now consistently bypass BLAS when the inputs have NaN/Inf values. Performance of the check of inputs has been improved. Performance when BLAS is used is improved for matrix/vector and vector/matrix multiplication (DGEMV is now used instead of DGEMM).
One can now choose from alternative matrix product implementations via ‘options(matprod = )’. The ‘"internal"’ implementation is not optimized for speed but consistent in precision with other summations in R (uses ‘long double’ accumulators). ‘"blas"’ calls BLAS directly for best speed, yet usually with undefined behavior for inputs with NaN/Inf.
(Unix-alike) The default method for ‘download.file()’ and ‘url()’ now
always chooses ‘"libcurl"’ except for ‘file://’ URLs. There will be
small changes in the format and wording of messages, and those who use
proxies should check that their settings are compatible (see
‘?download.file’: the most commonly used forms work for both methods
‘"internal"’ and ‘"libcurl"’).
‘R CMD check --as-cran’ now NOTEs if the package does not register its native routines or does not declare its intentions on (native) symbol search. (This will become a WARNING in due course.)
‘findMethod()’ failed if the active signature had expanded beyond what a particular package used. (Example with packages ‘XR’ and ‘XRJulia’ on CRAN).