[ci] upgrade to R 4.1.2 in CI, change approach to macOS-latest R CI builds (fixes #4988)

[jameslamb]

Fixes #4988.

See #4988 for a description of recent CI issues with R macOS builds.

I believe it could be related to GitHub Actions upgrading its macOS-latest environment to macOS 11.x 2 days ago. See actions/runner-images#4048.

Searched around GitHub a bit and found a discussion in r-lib/actions that seems relevant. r-lib/actions#412 describes an issue where older R installers can't create the necessary symlinks to R and Rscript on macOS 11.x.

The changes in this PR are based on the changes that that project used to fix that issue: r-lib/actions@a1c2c67

[jameslamb]

It looks like these symlink changes fixed the issue for R 3.6.x, but not R 4.1.x: https://github.com/microsoft/LightGBM/runs/4994766651?check_suite_focus=true

I noticed at https://cran.r-project.org/bin/macosx/base/ that R 4.1.2 was published in November 2021. This project's CI currently uses R 4.1.1, published in August 2021.

I pushed 8117a05 updated the R version to 4.1.2, hoping that that version's installer would work with macOS 11.x. Probably a good idea to do this anyway, per #3763.

[jameslamb]

Ok I think this is ready for review! Sorry that the research is split between comments here and on #4988, I should have tried to keep them all in one place.

Summary of changes:

• pin R 4.x builds to macOS-10.15 environment (the environment they were running on until 3 days ago)
  • reference: [ci] [R-package] macOS builds failing to install R #4988 (comment)
• for R 3.x builds, continue using macOS-latest environment but manually set symlinks to R and Rscript necessary to make that work
  • references: Possible breaking changes to macos-latest runner for older versions of R r-lib/actions#412 + r-lib/actions@a1c2c67

[StrikerRUS]

Thanks for looking into this!

Why can't we use the latest versions of macOS and R together? I believe this is the most popular scenario among users.

Maybe we can use Homebrew installation for R?

[jameslamb]

Why can't we use the latest versions of macOS and R together?

I don't know, but I can see in #4988 (comment) that GitHub itself was also not able to build the latest version of R on the macOS-latest environment.

When I tried that with R 4.1.2 from CRAN, I saw the following error (build link)

installer: Error - the package path specified was invalid: '/Users/runner/work/LightGBM/LightGBM/R.pkg'.

Maybe we can use Homebrew installation for R?

Maybe. I've never used R from homebrew before (in this project, other projects, or personally) so I can't say how that differs from the .pkg packages provided by CRAN or what other issues we might face with it.

If you want to try that you're welcome to push commits to this branch. But I don't have much time to devote to LightGBM this week so I can't commit to trying that. I think this PR in its current state is sufficient to unblock CI in this project without losing any coverage of OS-compiler-R_version combinations, as until a few days ago we were also not testing the R package with R 4.1.2 + macOS 11.x.

[StrikerRUS]

Also linking related feature request: actions/runner-images#4960.

[StrikerRUS]

When I tried that with R 4.1.2 from CRAN, I saw the following error (build link)

Could you please document this in a new our internal feature request?

[StrikerRUS]

LGTM except one suggestion below.
Thank you for unblocking CI!

[StrikerRUS]

I guess we need update all R versions in this list (4.0 -> 4.1), not only for macOS

LightGBM/.github/workflows/r_package.yml

Lines 30 to 140 in 0075814

	matrix:
	include:
	################
	# CMake builds #
	################
	- os: ubuntu-latest
	task: r-package
	compiler: gcc
	r_version: 3.6
	build_type: cmake
	- os: ubuntu-latest
	task: r-package
	compiler: gcc
	r_version: 4.0
	build_type: cmake
	- os: ubuntu-latest
	task: r-package
	compiler: clang
	r_version: 3.6
	build_type: cmake
	- os: ubuntu-latest
	task: r-package
	compiler: clang
	r_version: 4.0
	build_type: cmake
	- os: macOS-latest
	task: r-package
	compiler: gcc
	r_version: 3.6
	build_type: cmake
	- os: macOS-latest
	task: r-package
	compiler: gcc
	r_version: 4.0
	build_type: cmake
	- os: macOS-latest
	task: r-package
	compiler: clang
	r_version: 3.6
	build_type: cmake
	- os: macOS-latest
	task: r-package
	compiler: clang
	r_version: 4.0
	build_type: cmake
	- os: windows-latest
	task: r-package
	compiler: MINGW
	toolchain: MINGW
	r_version: 3.6
	build_type: cmake
	- os: windows-latest
	task: r-package
	compiler: MINGW
	toolchain: MSYS
	r_version: 4.0
	build_type: cmake
	# Visual Studio 2017
	- os: windows-2016
	task: r-package
	compiler: MSVC
	toolchain: MSVC
	r_version: 3.6
	build_type: cmake
	# Visual Studio 2019
	- os: windows-2019
	task: r-package
	compiler: MSVC
	toolchain: MSVC
	r_version: 4.0
	build_type: cmake
	# Visual Studio 2022
	- os: windows-2022
	task: r-package
	compiler: MSVC
	toolchain: MSVC
	r_version: 4.0
	build_type: cmake
	###############
	# CRAN builds #
	###############
	- os: windows-latest
	task: r-package
	compiler: MINGW
	toolchain: MINGW
	r_version: 3.6
	build_type: cran
	- os: windows-latest
	task: r-package
	compiler: MINGW
	toolchain: MSYS
	r_version: 4.0
	build_type: cran
	- os: ubuntu-latest
	task: r-package
	compiler: gcc
	r_version: 4.0
	build_type: cran
	- os: macOS-latest
	task: r-package
	compiler: clang
	r_version: 4.0
	build_type: cran
	################
	# Other checks #
	################
	- os: ubuntu-latest
	task: r-rchk
	compiler: gcc
	r_version: 4.0
	build_type: cran

[jameslamb]

ah yep you're right! Updated in 7cb0fd0

[jameslamb]

could you please document this in a new feature request?

Added #4990 and added it to #2302

[github-actions]

This pull request has been automatically locked since there has not been any recent activity since it was closed. To start a new related discussion, open a new issue at https://github.com/microsoft/LightGBM/issues including a reference to this.