soilDB 2.9.0

[brownag]

This will be a significant minor release of soilDB that removes several deprecated aspects of result structure, function arguments, etc.

• Remove deprecated NASIS column aliases (https://ncss-tech.github.io/AQP/soilDB/bulletins/2025.01-1-soilDB-NASIS-column-aliases.html)
• Bump to minimum R version 4.1 soilDB minimum R version #424
  • Remove deprecated stringsAsFactors usages
• Return original NASIS record IDs from SDM in relevant SDA queries Return original NASIS record IDs from SDM in relevant SDA queries #397 Full resolution of issue 397 has been deferred pending SSURGO schema updates or new routines for amending schema
• Implement better checks of terra functionality for safe skipping of tests, examples, and checking required namespace terra usage is not robust to missing/invalid GDAL/PROJ installation #375

Will close #242, #375, and #424

[dylanbeaudette]

The new SDA vignette is excellent, thanks for taking the time to write this.

I'm glad that you included a section on chunk-wise processing. Consider using the following instead of a for loop:

chunks <- makeChunks(mukey)
res <- lapply(split(mukey, chunks), ... )

For most use cases it doesn't really matter, but in my experience, the above approach is readily converted to parallel processing or related functions like purrr::map() that have some convenient features (progress bars and such).

Also, it might be useful to demonstrate iteration over soil survey area symbols. I'd be happy to add that later on as it is not a high priority--just something that I find myself doing all the time.

[brownag]

I was thinking that a for loop was easier to understand, but I personally prefer lapply() and related for most things. I've made the suggested changes, and changed the example that only had 10 mukeys to a soil survey area example. Also, added a new section on error handling and retry logic.

[brownag]

Winbuilder is taking forever today/yesterday, I got one through last night but it took several hours, it was just one NOTE about URL issues fixed above.

I am going to go ahead and merge this shortly. I am not in a huge rush to get it on CRAN, but want it available for the stats class next week as removing all the deprecation flags will make it easier for folks to see other output from e.g. fetchNASIS(). Will tell folks to update their soilDB as part of the precourse tomorrow and initial materials on Monday. I have rebuilt the book with 2.9.0 so I think we are safe to go ahead with that, but if we aren't we'll find out soon and deal with it then.