NEW FEATURES:

• as.integer(rl) and hence as.raw(rl) now work for a list of raw(1)
  elements, as proposed by Michael Chirico's PR#18696.

• graphics' grid() gains optional argument nintLog.

• New functions check_package_urls() and check_package_dois() in
  package tools for checking URLs and DOIs in package sources.

• New head() and tail() methods for class "ts" time series,
  proposed by Spencer Graves on R-devel.

• New qr.influence() function, a “bare bones” interface to the
  lm.influence() leave-one-out diagnostics computations; wished for
  in PR#18739.

• Package citation() results auto-generated from the package
  metadata now also provide package DOIs for CRAN and Bioconductor
  packages.

• New function grepv() identical to grep() except for the default
  value = TRUE.

• methods(<pkg>:::<genfun>) now does report methods when neither
  the generic nor the methods have been exported.

• pdf() gains an author argument to set the corresponding metadata
  field, and logical arguments timestamp and producer to optionally
  omit the respective metadata. (Thanks to Edzer Pebesma.)

• grDevices::glyphInfo() gains a rot argument to allow per-glyph
  rotation. (Thanks to Daniel Sabanes Bove.)

• Package tools now exports functions CRAN_current_db(),
  CRAN_aliases_db(), CRAN_rdxrefs_db(), CRAN_archive_db(), and
  CRAN_authors_db().

• Package tools now exports functions R() and
  parse_URI_reference().

• Package tools now exports functions base_aliases_db() and
  base_rdxrefs_db().

• It is now possible to set the background color for row and column
  names in the data editor on Windows (Rgui).

• Rterm on Windows now accepts input lines of unlimited length.

• file.info() on Windows now provides file owner name and domain.

• Sys.info() on Windows now provides current user domain.

• findInterval() gets new arguments checkSorted and checkNA which
  allow skipping relatively costly checks; related to PR#16567.

• pnorm(x) underflows more gracefully.

• get(nam, env) now signals a classed error, "getMissingError",
  as “subclass” of "missingArgError" where the latter is used also
  in similar situations, e.g., f <- function(x) exp(x); try(f()) .

• The set operations now avoid the as.vector() transformation for
  same-kind apparently vector-like operands.

• md5sum() can be used to compute an MD5 hash of a raw vector of
  bytes by using the bytes= argument instead of files=. The two
  arguments are mutually exclusive.

• Added function sha256sum() in package tools analogous to md5sum()
  implementing the SHA-256 hashing algorithm.

• The xtfrm() method for class "AsIs" is now considerably faster
  thanks to a patch provided by Ivan Krylov.

• The merge() method for data frames will no longer convert row
  names used for indexing using I(), which will lead to faster
  execution in cases where sort = TRUE and all.x and/or all.y are
  set to TRUE.

• The methods package internal function .requirePackage() now calls
  requireNamespace(p) instead of require(p), hence no longer adding
  packages to the search() path in cases methods or class
  definitions are needed. Consequently, previous workflows relying
  on the old behaviour will have to be amended by adding
  corresponding library(p) calls.

• More R-level messages use a common format containing "character
  string" for more consistency and less translation work.

• available.packages() and install.packages() get an optional
  switch cache_user_dir, somewhat experimentally.

• The sunspot.month data have been updated to Oct 2024; because of
  recalibration also historical numbers are changed, and we keep
  the previous data as sunspot.m2014 for reproducibility.

• The quartz() device now supports alpha masks. Thanks to George
  Stagg, Gwynn Gebeyhu, Heather Turner, and Tomek Gieorgijewski.

• The print() method for date-time objects (POSIX.t) gets an
  optional digits argument for fractional seconds, passed to
  improved format.POSIXlt(); consequently, print(<date.time>, digits = n) allows to print fractions of seconds.

• install.packages() and download.packages() download packages
  simultaneously using libcurl, significantly reducing download
  times when installing or downloading multiple packages.

• Status reporting in download.file() has been extended to report
  the outcome for individual files in simultaneous downloads.

• The Rd \link macro now allows markup in the link text when the
  topic is given by the optional argument, e.g.,
  \link[=gamma]{\eqn{\Gamma(x)}}.

• If La_library() is empty, sessionInfo() still reports
  La_version() when available.

• seq.int(from, to, by, ....) when |by| = 1 now behaves as if by
  was omitted, and hence returns from:to, possibly integer.

• seq.Date(from, to, by, ....) and seq.POSIXt(..) now also work
  when from is missing and sufficient further arguments are
  provided, thanks to Michael Chirico's report, patch proposal in
  PR#17672 and ‘R Dev Day’ contributions.

  The Date method also works for seq(from, to), when by is missing
  and now defaults to "1 days".

  It is now documented (and tested) that the by string may be
  abbreviated in both seq methods.

  Both methods return or keep internal type "integer" more
  consistently now. Also, as.POSIXct({}) is internally integer.

• duplicated(), unique(), and anyDuplicated() now also work for
  class expression vectors.

• New function use() to use packages in R scripts with full control
  over what gets added to the search path. (Actually already
  available since R 4.4.0.)

• There is some support for zstd compression of tarballs in tar()
  and untar(). (This depends on OS support of libzstd or by tar.)

• print(summary(<numbers>)) gets new optional argument zdigits to
  allow more flexible and consistent (double) rounding. The
  current default zdigits = 4L is somewhat experimental.
  Specifying both digits = *, zdigits = * allows behaviour
  independent of the global digits option.

• The format() method for "difftime" objects gets a new back
  compatible option with.units.

• A summary() method for "difftime" objects which prints nicely,
  similar to those for "Date" and "POSIXct".

• unique()'s default method now also deals with "difftime" objects.

• optimize(f, *) when f(x) is not finite says more about the value
  in its warning message. It no longer replaces -Inf by the
  largest positive finite number.

• The documentation of gamma() and is.numeric() is more specific,
  thanks to the contributors of PR#18677.

• New dataset gait thanks to Heather Turner and Ella Kaye, used in
  examples.

• New datasets penguins and penguins_raw thanks to Ella Kaye,
  Heather Turner, and Kristen Gorman.

• isSymmetric(<matrix>) gains a new option trans = "C"; when set to
  non-default, it tests for “simple” symmetry of complex matrices.

• model.frame() produces more informative error messages in some
  cases when variables in the formula are not found, thanks to Ben
  Bolker's PR#18860.

• selectMethod(f, ..) now keeps the function name if the function
  belongs to a group generic and the method is for the generic.

BLAS and LAPACK:

• The bundled BLAS and LAPACK sources have been updated to those
  shipped as part of January 2025's LAPACK 3.12.1.

• It is intended that this will be the last update to BLAS and
  LAPACK in the R sources. Those building R from source are
  encouraged to use external BLAS and LAPACK and this will be
  required in future.

• This update was mainly bug fixes but contained a barely
  documented major change. The set of BLAS routines had been
  unchanged since 1988, so throughout R's history. This update
  introduced new BLAS routines dgemmtr and zgemmtr which are now
  used by LAPACK routines. This means that BLAS implementations
  are no longer interchangeable.

• To work around this, R can be configured with option
  --with-2025blas which arranges for the 2025 BLAS additions to be
  compiled into libRlapack (the internal LAPACK, not built if an
  external LAPACK is used).

  This option allows the continuation of the practice of swapping
  the BLAS in use by symlinking lib/libRblas.*. It has the
  disadvantage of using the reference BLAS version of the 2025
  routines whereas an enhanced BLAS might have an optimized version
  (OpenBLAS does as from version 0.3.29).

• Windows builds currently use the internal LAPACK and by default
  the internal BLAS: notes on how to swap the latter via
  Rblas.dll are in file src/extra/blas/Makefile.win.

INSTALLATION on a UNIX-ALIKE:

• A C23 compiler (if available) is now selected by default for
  compilation of R and packages. R builds can opt out via the
  configure flag --without-C23, unless the specified or default
  (usually gcc) compiler defaults to C23: gcc 15 will.

  A C23 compiler is known to be selected with gcc 13-15, LLVM clang
  18-20 (and 15 should), Apple clang 15-17 and Intel 2024.2-2025.0
  (and 2022.2 should).

  Current binary distributions on macOS use Apple clang 14 and so
  do not use C23.

• The minimum autoconf requirement for a maintainer build has been
  increased to autoconf 2.72.

• Building the HTML and Info versions of the R manuals now requires
  texi2any from Texinfo 6.1 or later.

• Failures in building the manuals under doc now abort the
  installation, removing any file which caused the failure.

• Control of symbol visibility is now supported on macOS (the
  previous check only worked on ELF platforms).

• There is now support for installing the debug symbols for
  recommended packages on macOS: see REC_INSTALL_OPT in file
  config.site.

• configure is now able to find an external libintl on macOS (the
  code from an older GNU gettext distribution failed to try linking
  with the macOS Core Foundation framework).

INSTALLATION on WINDOWS:

• Both building R and installing packages use the C compiler in C23
  mode.

• R on Windows by default uses pkg-config for linking against
  external libraries. This makes it easier to test R and packages
  with alternative toolchains (such as from Msys2, e.g., testing
  with LLVM and possibly with sanitizers). It also allows more
  significant Rtools updates within a single R minor release.

• The installer scripts for Windows have been tailored to Rtools45,
  an update of the Rtools44 toolchain. It is based on GCC 14. The
  experimental support for 64-bit ARM (aarch64) CPUs is based on
  LLVM 19. R-devel and R 4.5.x are no longer maintained to be
  buildable using Rtools44 and it is advised to switch to Rtools45.

DEPRECATED AND DEFUNCT:

• is.R() is defunct. Environment variable _R_DEPRECATED_IS_R_ no
  longer has any effect.

• Deprecated (for more than 9 years!) functions linearizeMlist,
  listFromMlist, and showMlist and the "MethodsList" class for S4
  method handling were removed from package methods. Deprecated
  functions balanceMethodsList, emptyMethodsList,
  inheritedSubMethodLists, insertMethod, insertMethodInEmptyList,
  makeMethodsList, mergeMethods, MethodsList, MethodsListSelect,
  and SignatureMethod were made defunct, as were the "MethodsList"
  branches of functions assignMethodsMetaData, finalDefaultMethod,
  and MethodAddCoerce.

• getMethods(*, table = TRUE) is deprecated.

• Building with the bundled (and old) version of libintl is
  deprecated and now gives a configure warning. This should be
  selected only if neither the OS's libc (as on GNU Linux) nor an
  external libintl library provide suitable functions.

  Instead install libintl from a recent version of GNU gettext
  (available for macOS) or use configure option --disable-nls.

  The ability to use the bundled version may be removed as soon as
  R 4.5.1.

• The deprecated xfig() graphics device has been removed.

PACKAGE INSTALLATION:

• Packages are now installed using C23 where supported by the OS
  and R build.

  Packages using R's compiler settings can ask not to use C23
  via including USE_C17 in SystemRequirements or can be installed
  by R CMD INSTALL --use-C17. (Some packages ignore these settings
  in their configure script or when compiling in sub-directories of
  src, as will those using a src/Makefile.)

• Source installs now report the package version in the log.

• There is preliminary support for C++26 with GCC >= 14, Apple
  clang++ >= 16 and LLVM clang++ >= 17.

C-LEVEL FACILITIES:

• The non-API and hidden entry points Rf_setIVector, Rf_setRVector
  and Rf_setSVector have been removed.

• The internal code for changing the parent of an environment now
  signals an error if the new parent is not an environment or if
  the change would create a cycle in the parent chain.

• SET_TYPEOF now signals an error unless the old and new types have
  compatible memory structure and content. Use of SET_TYPE in
  package C code should be avoided and may be deprecated in the
  near future. It is better to allocate an object of the desired
  type in the first place.

• The set of LAPACK (double and complex) routines declared in the
  headers R_ext/Lapack.h and R_ext/Applic.h has been extended,
  mostly to routines actually in use by packages.

• Memory allocation messages now use the (non-SI notation) "Mb",
  "Gb" , ..., and "Mbytes" strings as arguments instead of as
  part of the (translatable format) string. This is one step for
  PR#18297; from Henrik Bengtsson.

• Header R_ext/Constants.h (included by R.h) now always includes
  header float.h or cfloat for constants such as DBL_MAX.

• Strict R headers are now the default. This removes the legacy
  definitions of PI, Calloc, Realloc and Free: use M_PI, R_Calloc,
  R_Realloc or R_Free instead.

• The deprecated and seemingly never-used S-compatibility macros
  F77_COM and F77_COMDECL have been removed from header R_ext/RS.h.

• The enum Rboolean defined in header R_ext/Boolean.h now has a
  fixed underlying type of int on platforms whose C compiler
  supports this.

  This is a C23 feature (taken from C++11) and also supported in
  all C standards by some versions of clang (from LLVM and Apple)
  and (with a warning when using -pedantic) by GCC when in C17
  mode.

  A fair amount of code has assumed this: it may be changed to a
  smaller type in future. In particular, as standard compilers do
  not check the validity of assignment to an enum, it has been
  possible to assign NA_INTEGER to an Rboolean variable, coerce it
  to int and recover the value.

  If there were a platform which used an underlying type of a
  different size this would be an ABI-breaking change (but we are
  unaware of any such platform).

• Header R_ext/Boolean.h now ensures that a bool type is available
  either as a keyword (C23 and C++) or by including the C99 header
  stdbool.h. This is being used internally in R to replace
  Rboolean by bool.

• There are new functions asRboolean and asBool, variants of
  asLogical more suited to converting logical arguments to Rboolean
  or to bool. They require a length-one input and throw an error if
  that evaluates to NA.

• Header R_exts/Error.h now ensures that Rf_error and similar are
  given a noreturn attribute when used from C++ under all
  compilers.

• Header R_exts/Utils.h no longer contains a declaration for
  F77_SUB(interv). This is intended to be called from Fortran and
  was wrongly declared: LOGICAL in Fortran corresponds to int * not
  Rboolean *.

• Defining R_INCLUDE_BOOLEAN_H to 0 before including headers R.h or
  Rinternals.h (or any other header which includes R_ext/Boolean.h)
  stops the inclusion of header R_ext/Boolean.h which defines' constants TRUE, FALSE, true, falseand the typebool` which some
  package maintainers wish to avoid.

  Note that the last three are keywords in C23 and C++11 so cannot
  be avoided entirely. However, with commonly-used compilers they
  can be masked by a macro of the same name, often with a warning.

C-LEVEL API:

• The ‘Writing R Extensions’ Texinfo source now contains very
  experimental annotations for more clearly identifying the API
  status of C entry points. These annotations are used to produce
  indices for API, experimental API, and embedded API entry points
  in the rendered versions. This is very preliminary and may be
  dropped if a better approach emerges.

  Also for Fortran-callable entry points which are part of the API.

• ‘Writing R Extensions’ has a new section ‘Moving into C API
  compliance’ to help package authors move away from using non-API
  endpoints. This section will continue to be updated as work on
  clarifying and tightening the C API continues.

• New API function R_mkClosure. This checks that its arguments are
  valid and should be used instead of allocSExp(CLOSXP) followed by
  SET_FORMALS, SET_BODY, and SET_CLOENV.

• New API functions R_ClosureFormals, R_ClosureBody, and
  R_ClosureEnv for extracting closure components. The existing
  functions R_ClosureExpr and R_BytecodeExpr have also been added
  to the API.

• New API function R_ParentEnv corresponding to R's parent.env().

• Further non-API entry points have been added to those reported by
  R CMD check: COMPLEX0, ddfind, DDVAL, ENSURE_NAMEDMAX, ENVFLAGS,
  FRAME, HASHTAB, INTERNAL, IS_ASCII, IS_UTF8, LEVELS, NAMED,
  PRSEEN, RDEBUG, REAL0, Rf_findVarInFrame3, SET_BODY, SET_CLOENV,
  SET_FORMALS, SET_PRSEEN, SET_RDEBUG, STRING_PTR, SYMVALUE, and
  VECTOR_PTR. Any declarations for these in public header files
  will be removed in the near future, and they will be hidden where
  possible.

• Some R CMD check NOTEs on the use of non-API entry points have
  been upgraded to WARNINGs in preparation for removing
  declarations and, where possible, hiding these entry points.

• Additional non-API entry points have been added to those reported
  by R CMD check: IS_LONG_VEC, PRCODE, PRENV, PRVALUE, R_nchar,
  Rf_NonNullStringMatch, R_shallow_duplicate_attr, Rf_StringBlank,
  SET_TYPEOF, TRUELENGTH, XLENGTH_EX, and XTRUELENGTH.

• Enable defining R_NO_REMAP_RMATH and calling Rf_*() as has been
  documented in ‘Writing R Extensions’ for a while, fixing PR#18800
  thanks to Mikael Jagan and Suharto Anggono.

• R_GetCurrentSrcref(skip) now skips calls rather than srcrefs,
  consistent with counting items in the traceback() display. If
  skip == NA_INTEGER, it searches for the first srcref, starting at
  the current evaluation state and proceeding through the call
  stack; otherwise, it returns the srcref of the requested entry
  from the call stack.

UTILITIES:

• R CMD INSTALL (and hence check) now compile C++ code with
  -DR_NO_REMAP.

  ‘Writing R Extensions’ has been revised to describe the remapped
  entry points, for with the Rf_ prefix remains optional when used
  from C code (but is recommended for new C code).

• R CMD check --as-cran notes bad parts in the DESCRIPTION file's
  URL fields.

• R CMD check now reports more warnings on long-deprecated/obsolete
  Fortran features reported by gfortran -Wall. For hints on how to
  modernize these, see
  https://fortranwiki.org/fortran/show/Modernizing+Old+Fortran.

• Since almost all supported R versions now use UTF-8, R CMD check
  no longer by default reports on marked UTF-8 or Latin-1 strings
  in character data. Set environment variable
  _R_CHECK_PACKAGE_DATASETS_SUPPRESS_NOTES_ to a false value for
  the previous behaviour.

• tools::checkDocFiles() notes more cases of usage documentation
  without corresponding \alias.

• R CMD check with a true value for environment variable
  _R_CHECK_BASHISMS_ checks more thoroughly, including for bash
  scripts and bashisms in components of autoconf-generated
  configure scripts.

• R CMD check gains option --run-demo to check demo scripts
  analogously to tests. This includes a check for undeclared
  package dependencies: it can also be enabled separately by
  setting the environment variable _R_CHECK_PACKAGES_USED_IN_DEMO_
  to a true value (as done by R CMD check --as-cran).

• R CMD build now supports --compression=zstd on platforms with
  sufficient support for zstd.

• tools::texi2pdf(..., texinputs=<paths>) now _pre_pends the
  specified <paths> to TEXINPUTS. When building R itself
  (doc/NEWS.pdf and base vignettes) or package manuals using R CMD Rd2pdf, it is ensured that this R's Rd.sty takes precedence over
  any other (incompatible) versions in default “texmf trees”.

• tools::Rd2latex() no longer outputs an \inputencoding{utf8} line
  by default; such a declaration is obsolete since LaTeX
  2018-04-01.

BUG FIXES:

• update_pkg_po() now copies .mo files to the translation package
  even if a DESCRIPTION file exists, thanks to Michael Chirico
  fixing PR#18694.

• Auto-generated citation() entries no longer include (additional)
  URLs in the note field (PR#18547).

• as.data.frame.list() gets a new option new.names and now
  preserves NA names, thus fixing the format() method for data
  frames, and also bug PR#18745. Relatedly, the format() method
  gets an option cut.names.

• stem() formats correctly also in cases where rounding up, e.g.,
  from 9.96 to 10 needs more digits; thanks to Ella Kaye and Kelly
  Bodwin, fixing PR#8934 during ‘R Dev Day’ at useR!2024.

  Additionally, stem(x) now works normally also when length(x) == 1.

• tools' toTitleCase() now works better, fixing PR#18674, thanks to
  Shannon Pileggi, Sarah Zeller, Reiko Okamoto, and Hugo Gruson's
  ‘R Dev Day’ effort.

• Printing matrices (typically with many rows and or columns) now
  also omits columns when desirable according to option max.print,
  or argument max, respectively. This is primarily the work of
  Lorena Abad, Ekaterina Akimova, Hanne Oberman, Abhishek Ulayil,
  and Lionel Henry at the ‘R Dev Day’, thus fixing PR#15027.

• Sys.setLanguage() now warns about some failures to change the
  language.

• Printing ls.str() now shows "" even when R's language
  setting is not English.

• xyTable() now handles and reports NAs fixing PR#18654. Thanks to
  Heather Turner and Zhian Kamvar for report and patch.

• as(*, "raw") now works as documented, thanks to Mikael Jagan's
  PR#18795.

• Informational messages of e.g., print(1:1e4, max=1000), now
  correctly mention max in addition to getOption("max.print").

• rowSums(A, dims = dd), colMeans(..), etc, give a more helpful
  error message when dd is not of length one, thanks to Michael
  Chirico's PR#18811.

• seq.Date() no longer explicitly coerces results from integer to
  double, analogously with seq.default(), seq.int() and
  seq.POSIXt(), resolving a modified PR#18782.

• axisTicks(usr, ...) documentation clarification for log = TRUE,
  fixing bug PR#18821 thanks to Duncan Murdoch.

• debug() and debugonce(fun) now also accept a string fun when it
  names an S4 generic, fixing PR#18822 thanks to Mikael Jagan.

• debugonce(<S4-simple-body>, signature=*) now works correctly when
  “called twice”, fixing PR#18824 thanks to Mikael Jagan.

• format(dtime, digits=* / format=*) is more consistent when the
  POSIXt date-time object dtime has fractional (non integer)
  seconds. Fixes PR#17350, thanks to new contributions by LatinR's
  ‘R Dev Day’ participants, Heather Turner and Dirk Eddelbuettel;
  also fixes more cases, notably when format contains "

• options(scipen = NULL) and other invalid values now signal an
  error instead of invalidating ops relying on a finite integer
  value. Values outside the range -9 .. 9999 are now warned about
  and set to a boundary or to the default 0, e.g., in case of an
  NA.

• cbind() could segfault with NULL inputs. (Seen when R was built
  with gcc-14, LTO and C99 inlining semantics.)

• Fix segfault on quartz() from grid.glyph() call with glyphInfo()
  that describes non-existent font (PR#18784). Thanks to Tomek
  Gieorgijewski.

• format() etc, using decimal.mark = s, by default getting s <- getOption("OutDec"), signals a warning (to become an error in the
  future) when s is not a string with exactly one character.

• When s <- getOption("OutDec") is not a string of one character, a
  warning is signalled now whenever it is used in internal C code,
  notably when calling the default methods of format().

• pwilcox() and qwilcox() now check for user interrupt less
  frequently.

• summary(<stl>) (which prints directly) finally gets the same
  digits default as the formatting printing of default summary()
  method results, and it is documented explicitly.

• options(show.error.locations = TRUE) once again shows the most
  recent known location when an error is reported. Setting its
  value to "bottom" is no longer supported. Numerical values are
  converted to logical.

• C API function R_GetCurrentSrcref(skip) now returns srcref
  entries correctly. (Note that there is also a change to the
  interpretation of skip; see the C-LEVEL API entry above.)

• tools::Rd2latex() now removes leading and trailing spaces from
  \alias entries as documented, fixing indexing and linking hiccups
  in some PDF manuals.

• R CMD Rd2pdf can now render the package manual from a --latex
  installation also when the help contains figures.

• The argument of as.environment() is now named x, not object, as
  was always documented and shown when printing it; thanks to Gael
  Millot's PR#18849.

• When R CMD check aims at getting the time+date from a world
  clock, it is more robust against unexpected non-error results,
  thanks to Michael Chirico's PR#18852.

• The tools::parseLatex() parser made several parsing errors
  (PR#18855).

• Error messages produced by tools::parseLatex() are now more
  readable (PR#18855).

• R CMD build <pkg> excludes more file patterns when it tars the
  <pkg> directory, fixing both PR#18432 and PR#18434, for vim and
  GNU Global emacs users, thanks to Dirk Eddelbuettel's patch.

• quantile()'s default method gets an option fuzz to protect
  against floating point inaccuracy before rounding, thus fixing
  PR#15811 and, en passant, PR#17683.

• Printing arrays now also omits columns, rows and slices when
  desirable according to option max.print, or argument max,
  respectively, addressing most of the remaining part of PR#15027,
  thanks to Sherry Zhang's patch.

• drop.terms(y ~ w, 1) and similar now work, thanks to Benjamin
  Sommer's report in PR#18861 and collaboration with Heather Turner
  improving reformulate().

• Many arguments which should be length-1 logical are checked more
  thoroughly. The most commonly seen errors are in unlink(),
  recursive(), tempdir() and the na.rm arguments of max(), min(),
  sum(), ....

  grep(), strsplit() and similar took non-TRUE/FALSE values of
  their logical arguments as FALSE, but these were almost always
  mismatches to unnamed arguments and are now reported as NA.

• vignette("reshape") is now also available on Windows.

• trace(coerce, ..) now works correctly, fixing PR#18823 thanks to
  Mikael Jagan.

• R CMD check now also reports bad symbols in package shared
  objects linked in from local static libraries (PR#18789).

• factanal() now works correctly also, e.g., for GPArotation,
  oblimin() rotations, fixing PR#18417, thanks to Coen Bernaards
  and others.

• Setting attributes on primitive functions is deprecated now and
  already an error in the development version of R. Changing the
  environment of a primitive does no longer happen and signals a
  warning.