[Rd] news file included in source but not binary package
Martin Maechler
maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch
Fri Jun 25 10:15:44 CEST 2004
>>>>> "AndyL" == Liaw, Andy <andy_liaw at merck.com>
>>>>> on Thu, 24 Jun 2004 19:33:00 -0400 writes:
>> From: Friedrich Leisch
>>
>> But to get to the heart of the email (something similar
>> was proposed by Greg Warnes a few weeks ago): We should
>> definetely provide a simple mechanism to see the latest
>> changes in a package.
>>
>> Question: I am aware of files calles NEWS and ChangeLog
>> (or CHANGELOG, etc.) holding the relevant information
>> ... are there any others we want/need to respect?
AndyL> Yes, I do recall the thread that Greg started. This
AndyL> is sort of trying to get it going again...
yes, thanks, Andy!
AndyL> Could we just settle on a standard name and be done
AndyL> with it? Since base R uses NEWS, why not just use
AndyL> that for all packages,
We emacs fans would definitely additionally want 'ChangeLog' (as
per Fritz' proposal).
This has been a standard name for decades with a very convenient
emacs interface ['C-x 4 a'] to create and update the file.
AndyL> and use NEWS.platform as Duncan suggested
AndyL> (in the top-level directory, rather than
AndyL> platform-specific directories)?
I agree.
BTW, both NEWS and ChangeLog have specific (but different) syntax
the main difference that NEWS entries are anonymous and not
dated whereas ChangeLog is a "log", i.e. has dated entries.
Kurt (or Fritz?) already mentioned in the earlier
'Greg-initiated' thread that it might be interesting to consider
automatic conversion of these files to (e.g.) html.
But such possibilities should not hinder us from agreeing *now*
that e.g. files with regexps
----------
m{NEWS.*}
m{Change(s|Log)}i
----------
should automatically be taken from the source toplevel directory
and put into <installed>/doc/<filename>.txt
^^^^
(the '.txt' maybe a good idea idea because the ./doc/ directory
can be easily opened in the browser in some interfaces)
Martin
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