[Rd] R CMD check should check date in description

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 4 April 2008 at 23:15, Antonio, Fabio Di Narzo wrote:
| 2008/4/4, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org>:
| >
| >  On 4 April 2008 at 14:05, hadley wickham wrote:
| >  | 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?
| >
| >
| > As I mentioned to Hadley in private mail, a version control system can update
| >  a field like $Date$ or $LastChangedDate$ automagically on writes or
| >  checkins. I use that as I also tend to forget to update the field manually.
| >  For SVN one must set one of the arcane propset fields.
| 
| That's not completely true. As far as I remember (git misses keywords)
| svn keywords are always referred only to the file they appear in. So
| this way the description file would contain the last date the
| description file itself has been modified, not the last date 'any of
| the package file s has been modified'.

I think you are correct. But as one has to augment the version number in
DESCRIPTION anyway, the subsequent check-in will set the date for free.  

It's a kludge, but one that has been working independently of R CMD ... for
years.

Hth, Dirk

--
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.