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.
Using terra over raster (#63)