Potential issues with distributional's native pipe usage

[jamesmbaazam]

As epiparameter imports {distributional}, which has switched to using the native pipe, thereby bumping up the required R version to be > 4.0, I thought to raise this issue so you assess the impact. Happy for you to close if not deemed one to be tracked/fixed.

Relevant issues/discussions:

• Use of |> introduces a dependency on R >= 4.1 mitchelloharawild/distributional#128
• Use of |> introduces a dependency on R >= 4.1 mitchelloharawild/distributional#128

[joshwlambert]

Thanks for raising @jamesmbaazam. I wouldn't have spotted this as the oldest version of R we test on in {epiparameter} CI is R-oldrel currently v4.3.3, so I appreciate you raising this before any users had issues.

Bumping the minimum R version to 4.1.0 would go against the Epiverse policy of the last 5 releases, which follows the Tidyverse policy. However, I think there will be a fair number of users with >= 4.1.0 and it would still support the last 4 R versions, so I think it's sensible to make the change.

It's unclear whether {distributional} will remove the use of the |>, but I think it's easier if we make this change now, in anticipation of it or other packages increasing their versions.

As this deviates from Epiverse policy I'll make a note of the reasoning in the design principles vignette.