[Rd] Suggestion: Add DESCRIPTION 'Date' to R CMD check log header

[Henrik Bengtsson]

Hi,

in R CMD check, the version of the package being checked is reported, e.g.

Thu Sep  9 05:02:30 2010: Checking package R.utils (SVN revision 399) ...
* using log directory ‘/srv/R/R.check/R-devel/PKGS/R.utils.Rcheck’
* using R version 2.12.0 Under development (unstable) (2010-09-07 r52876)
* using platform: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu (64-bit)
* using session charset: UTF-8
* checking for file ‘R.utils/DESCRIPTION’ ... OK
* this is package ‘R.utils’ version ‘1.5.2’
...

I'd like to request/suggest that the 'Date' in the DESCRIPTION file is
also added, e.g.

* this is package ‘R.utils’ version ‘1.5.2’ ('2010-09-14')


WHY?
This would be particular useful when you work toward sites like
R-forge and Bioconductor when you may commit your day's work on
package when you update the 'Date' but you do not really want to
update the 'Version' because you're going to put in more work
tomorrow.  With the 'Date' information you'll be able to see what
"version" of your updates have been checked by the servers.  I
understand that this may be an odd process to follow even for devel
branches and you may argue that you should always bump the version
number whenever you do an SVN commit (e.g. '1.5.2.1' for temporary
commits).  Either way, I find it useful to see the date as well.

Thxs

Henrik