I found out the package I was about to submit to CRAN has the same name of an archived package. What am I supposed to do now?

[umbe1987]

Hello everyone!
first post here for me
I have been working on a package which I feel now is mature enough to be submitted to CRAN.
Unfortunately, running devtools::check(remote = TRUE, manual = TRUE) I found out that there is already another archived package with the same name (rerf).
I read in the CRAN Repository Policy that

Packages should be named in a way that does not conflict (irrespective of case) with any current or past CRAN package (the Archive area can be consulted), nor any current Bioconductor package. Package maintainers give the right to use that package name to CRAN when they submit, so the CRAN team may orphan a package and allow another maintainer to take it over. Package names on CRAN are persistent and in general it is not permitted to change a package’s name.

So given your expertise, what would you suggest me? Should I contact the maintainers of the archived package or rename my package? From the github repo of the archived package I see the last commit was more than 6 years ago, but this does not mean much to me, especially given that in the website of the project it is written that it is

Currently available in Python and R (not actively developed)

So I guess I am better off changing the name, isn't it? If this is the case, how would you suggest to proceed, is it difficult?

Thank you in advance for any hints.

[Simon_Smart]

I think changing the name of yours is the only option. You could take over the existing one, but that would only be if you were going to maintain that, rather than overwrite it. The reason for this is so that anyone with an old library(rerf) in their code can always run it, even if they have to get the package from the archive. If they downloaded yours instead, their code would be broken.

[umbe1987]

Thank you for your feedback @Simon_Smart !
Do you know what are the steps to change the name of the package? I saw this other post with lots of possibilities, I was wondering which one would you suggest (i.e. 1) using the changer package, 2) simply changing the package name in DESCRIPTION, 3) follow the steps in this blogpost, 4) other?)
thank you once again.

[umbe1987]

Nevermind, I just changed the package name following the instructions in this blog post which worked like a charm! thank you for the interest and help!