Please remove dependencies on **rgdal**, **rgeos**, and/or **maptools**

[rsbivand]

This package depends on (depends, imports or suggests) raster and one or more of the retiring packages rgdal, rgeos or maptools (https://r-spatial.org/r/2022/04/12/evolution.html, https://r-spatial.org/r/2022/12/14/evolution2.html). Since raster 3.6.3, all use of external FOSS library functionality has been transferred to terra, making the retiring packages very likely redundant. It would help greatly if you could remove dependencies on the retiring packages as soon as possible.

[rsbivand]

00check.log
is a recent check log from running under SP_EVOLUTION_STATUS=2 without retiring r-spatial packages (suggested in this package) on the library path. The minimal correction is to check that the package namespaces can be loaded, and if not, do not run those parts of the examples. It would be safer in the longer term to replace retiring r-spatial packages with active r-spatial/rspatial packages (see https://r-spatial.org/r/2022/04/12/evolution.html, https://r-spatial.org/r/2022/12/14/evolution2.html).

[rsbivand]

Please also see https://r-spatial.org/r/2023/04/10/evolution3.html, fix best by June, latest October 2023.

[rsbivand]

@be-marc See also https://r-spatial.org/r/2023/05/15/evolution4.html. Please take urgent steps to resolve this issue. No positive changes appear in the repository. Less than three months remain to retain this package on CRAN.