[Rd] R CMD check should check date in description

[Kurt Hornik]

>>>>> hadley wickham writes:

> I'm always forgetting to update the date in DESCRIPTION.  Would it be
> possible to add a warning to R CMD check if it's old?

I recently thought about this.  I see several issues.

* How can we determine if it is "old"?  Relative to the time when the
  package was uploaded to a repository?

* Some developers might actually want a different date for a variety of
  reasons ...

* What we currently say in R-exts is

     The optional `Date' field gives the release date of the current
     version of the package.  It is strongly recommended to use the
     yyyy-mm-dd format conforming to the ISO standard.

  Many packages do not comply with the latter (but I have some code to
  sanitize most of these), and "release date" may be a moving target.

The best that I could think of is to teach R CMD build to *add* a Date
field if there was none.

Best
-k



> Hadley

> -- 
> http://had.co.nz/

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