[Rd] Possible bug in 2.11.x texmf makefile.in and some related things...

[Peter Dalgaard]

Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
....
>> So there was perhaps an oversight of sorts for 2.11.x in handling 
>> these two JSS related files.
> 
> That's a different hand.  I don't know if the files were intended to 
> be installed in 2.11.x: they are in R-devel so eventually packages 
> depending on R >= 2.12.0 will be able to rely on them.
> 


Looking through the logs, those two files were indeed committed to
r-devel, but long before the creation of R-2-11-branch. They appear not
to be used in any other part of the sources, so are indeed pretty
useless if not copied to the tarball (since we should not assume that
people in general build from svn checkouts). But as Brian points out,
they are only two out of many files that could be included as a service
to the user.

>> 3. A final note, which is that the NEWS file appears to be missing 
>> from R-Devel tonight:
...

>        \item \file{NEWS} is no longer in the sources, but generated as
>        part of the installation.  The primary source for changes is now
>        \file{doc/NEWS.Rd}.
> 
> A version of the NEWS file will be in the tarballs.

Yes. It's generally a bad principle to have anything but the base
sources in the repository, although we have had so for some things in
the past (notably Java class files), because we couldn't rely on
everyone having the appropriate tools. Especially with text files there
will always be the risk of editing the target file instead of the
source. (Just ask the editor of The R Journal how easy it is to remember
to edit RJournal.dtx and not RJournal.sty...)


-- 
Peter Dalgaard
Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
Phone: (+45)38153501
Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com