[Rd] Wishlist: optional svn-revision number tag in package DESCRIPTION file

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 3/31/2009 10:41 AM, Peter Ruckdeschel wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> just a little wish :
> 
> Could we have one (or maybe more) standardized optional tag(s)
> for package DESCRIPTION files to cover svn revision info?
> This would be very useful for bug reporting...
> 
> I know that any developer is already free to append corresponding lines
> to DESCRIPTION files to do something of this sort --- e.g. lines like
> 
> LastChangedDate: {$LastChangedDate: 2009-03-31 $}
> LastChangedRevision: {$LastChangedRevision: 447 $}

That will give you the last change to the DESCRIPTION file, not the last 
change to the package, so it could be misleading.  Last time I looked, 
there wasn't a way in svn to auto update a file that wasn't involved in 
a changeset.  (You could put something into your build script to call 
svnversion, but I don't know anything simpler.)

Duncan Murdoch


> 
> and correspondingly setting the svn keyword properties "LastChangedDate"
> and "LastChangedRevision" would clearly do (even without Makefile /
> configure ...)
> 
> But as package development under svn (especially under r-forge)
> is just so frequent, it would be nice to have a recommended
> format that could be read out in a standardized form, say
> by a function like packageDescription from package 'utils':-)
> 
> I would vote for optional extra tags "LastChangedDate"
> and "LastChangedRevision".
> 
> I have attached a commented and correspondingly
> modified version of packageDescription() --- if you find it
> helpful feel free to integrate it to package 'utils'.