[Rd] R CMD check should check date in description

[Douglas Bates]

On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 2:26 PM, Kurt Hornik <Kurt.Hornik at wu-wien.ac.at> wrote:
> >>>>> 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.

I agree.  I think that the Date field in the DESCRIPTION file should
reflect the date and time zone at which the package was built or some
other date of the package maintainer's choice.