[Bioc-devel] Webpage spring cleaning - Package submission

Wolfgang Huber whuber at embl.de
Fri Feb 22 16:08:55 CET 2013


I would like to suggest clarification of the information in the "Package Guidelines" [1] and the "Package Submission" [2] pages. 

1. Information that is actually of type "guideline" is (only) stated on the submission page, which is confusing. Shouldn't one page describe the applied criteria, and the other the submission procedure?

2. We state: "Packages should also conform to the following: • Use S4 classes and methods.". This is vague and confusing. I think what it should say is that *existing* S4 classes and generic functions, and existing methods, should be re-used. What many developers seem to interpret this as is that they should come up with lots of their own, new, ideosyncratic S4 classes and methods. Which mostly only adds overhead and complexity, and rarely any benefit. I would like to suggest removing that statement, or clarifying it.

	Best wishes
	Wolfgang


[1] http://www.bioconductor.org/developers/package-guidelines/
[2] http://www.bioconductor.org/developers/package-submission/


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