GH-43623: [R] remove libarrow backwards compatibility enforcement

[jonkeane]

Rationale for this change

Remove checks and enforcement of minimum versions. See discussion in the issue. This caused more confusion and discussion than it was helpful. We have the CI in git history if we need it.

What changes are included in this PR?

Removing the CI job

Are these changes tested?

They are the tests

Are there any user-facing changes?

No, we are still technically compatible with 19.0.1, but we don't explicitly support that or use it anywhere. The R package version should match the libarrow version to ensure compatibility — using anything else might work but is off label.

• GitHub Issue: [R] Discussion: libarrow backwards compatibility enforcement #43623

[github-actions]

⚠️ GitHub issue #43623 has been automatically assigned in GitHub to PR creator.

[jonkeane]

@github-actions crossbow submit -g r

[github-actions]

Revision: bf18353

Submitted crossbow builds: ursacomputing/crossbow @ actions-a14f05c971

Task	Status
r-binary-packages
r-recheck-most
test-r-arrow-backwards-compatibility
test-r-depsource-bundled
test-r-depsource-system
test-r-dev-duckdb
test-r-devdocs
test-r-extra-packages
test-r-gcc-11
test-r-gcc-12
test-r-install-local
test-r-install-local-minsizerel
test-r-linux-as-cran
test-r-linux-rchk
test-r-linux-sanitizers
test-r-linux-valgrind
test-r-m1-san
test-r-macos-as-cran
test-r-minimal-build
test-r-offline-maximal
test-r-offline-minimal
test-r-rhub-debian-gcc-devel-lto-latest
test-r-rhub-debian-gcc-release-custom-ccache
test-r-rhub-ubuntu-release-latest
test-r-rocker-r-ver-latest
test-r-rstudio-r-base-4.1-opensuse155
test-r-rstudio-r-base-4.2-focal
test-r-ubuntu-22.04
test-r-versions

[kou]

+1

[raulcd]

Isn't this required for the test-r-arrow-backwards-compatibility job too?

[jonkeane]

No, we use binaries for that job — though that job is failing for other reasons I need to figure out (https://github.com/ursacomputing/crossbow/actions/runs/15090630647/job/42418790800 is last night's run on main with the same failure)

[jonkeane]

#46504

[thisisnic]

After this merges, I'll take a look at rebasing #41998 as it removes the one thing we weren't sure about there

[jonkeane]

After this merges, I'll take a look at rebasing #41998 as it removes the one thing we weren't sure about there

😦 We've blocked things for ~1 year due to this 😦 That's unfortunate.

But, yes, please! 🙏 I think technically that could merge now since we bumped to 19.0.1 a little while ago already, but waiting until this PR merges is also totally fine.

[conbench-apache-arrow]

After merging your PR, Conbench analyzed the 4 benchmarking runs that have been run so far on merge-commit 218c886.

There were no benchmark performance regressions. 🎉

The full Conbench report has more details. It also includes information about 2 possible false positives for unstable benchmarks that are known to sometimes produce them.