[Rd] Issue tracking in packages [was: Re: [R] change in read.spss, package foreign?]

[Thomas Lumley]

On Sat, 10 Sep 2005, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:

> On 9/10/05, Thomas Lumley <tlumley at u.washington.edu> wrote:
>> On Sat, 10 Sep 2005, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
>>>
>>> And one more comment.   The DESCRIPTION file does not record the
>>> location or existence of the various subdirectories such as R, man,
>>> exec, etc. If NEWS is to be recorded as a meta data line item in
>>> DESCRIPTION then surely all of these should be too so its symmetric
>>> and they are all on an equal footing (or else none of them
>>> should be, which in fact I think is preferable).
>>>
>>
>> I don't see any advantage in symmetry.  The locations of these
>
> The present discussion is where the change information may be located
> but that is also true of the source and other information.    We could
> just as easily have a field in the DESCRIPTION that tells the build
> where to find the R source.
> Its really the same issue.
>

There are two important differences

1/ No existing package has its source anywhere other than in the R 
subdirectory. Existing packages have their change logs in different places 
and different formats.

2/ Having source code where it will not be found must be an error -- 
making the source code available to R *cannot* be optional.  Making a 
change log available *must* be optional.


 	-thomas