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

[Gabor Grothendieck]

On 9/10/05, Thomas Lumley <tlumley at u.washington.edu> wrote:
> 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 it source anywhere other than in the R
> subdirectory. Existing packages have their change logs in different places
> and different formats.

In terms of the source package the source code is in the R
subdirectory because its been standardized that way and the
R CMD tools support it.  It could, in principle be anywhere and brought
into the built package at build time had it not been designed that
way.  The same is true of the change information.  The point is
that there is really no difference in principle between the two.

Furthermore, what existing packages do is not important since its no harder
and probably easier to adapt to the standard scheme.  Even if that
were not the case I don't think that that should drive the design.

> 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.

Source code is optional too.  One can create a package with no
R subdirectory.  In fact the only thing you cannot leave out and
still pass R CMD check is the DESCRIPTION file.


There really is no difference between change information and the
source.  Both could be in the source package or not in the source
package and just brought into the built package at
build time depending on how the build process is designed.

Also in both cases the advantage of having everything in the
source package is that the built package can be guaranteed
to be built from the source package.