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

[Hervé Pagès]

On 09/15/2010 01:55 AM, Kurt Hornik wrote:
>>>>>> Martin Maechler writes:
>
>> Hi Henrik
>>>>>> "HB" == Henrik Bengtsson<hb at stat.berkeley.edu>
>>>>>>      on Tue, 14 Sep 2010 18:26:31 -0700 writes:
>
> HB>  Hi,
> HB>  in R CMD check, the version of the package being checked is reported, e.g.
>
> HB>  Thu Sep  9 05:02:30 2010: Checking package R.utils (SVN revision 399) ...
> HB>  * using log directory ‘/srv/R/R.check/R-devel/PKGS/R.utils.Rcheck’
> HB>  * using R version 2.12.0 Under development (unstable) (2010-09-07 r52876)
> HB>  * using platform: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu (64-bit)
> HB>  * using session charset: UTF-8
> HB>  * checking for file ‘R.utils/DESCRIPTION’ ... OK
> HB>  * this is package ‘R.utils’ version ‘1.5.2’
> HB>  ...
>
> HB>  I'd like to request/suggest that the 'Date' in the DESCRIPTION file is
> HB>  also added, e.g.
>
> HB>  * this is package ‘R.utils’ version ‘1.5.2’ ('2010-09-14')
>
>
> HB>  WHY?
> HB>  This would be particular useful when you work toward sites like
> HB>  R-forge and Bioconductor when you may commit your day's work on
> HB>  package when you update the 'Date' but you do not really want to
> HB>  update the 'Version' because you're going to put in more work
> HB>  tomorrow.  With the 'Date' information you'll be able to see what
> HB>  "version" of your updates have been checked by the servers.  I
> HB>  understand that this may be an odd process to follow even for devel
> HB>  branches and you may argue that you should always bump the version
> HB>  number whenever you do an SVN commit (e.g. '1.5.2.1' for temporary
> HB>  commits).  Either way, I find it useful to see the date as well.
>
>> I agree that this is useful.
>> Of course, for all those cases, where there's no  "Date:",
>> nothing (i.e. no "()") should be written.
>
>> If you (or someone) provide patches against  R-devel
>> ( https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/ )
>> and they pass 'make check-all', I'd add this feature.
>
> But pls not against the Date field by default:
>
> R-Forge packages record their revision in their package metadata.
>
> CRAN packages record Date/Publication in their metadata.
>
> Not sure about BioC ...

For BioC packages, I look at the svn revision number displayed
on the build/check report so I know exactly which version of my
package was built/checked:

   http://bioconductor.org/checkResults/2.7/bioc-LATEST/

But I can see Henrik's point to not depend on what a particular
build system does and to have this kind of feature incorporated
in 'R CMD check' itself.

Cheers,
H.

>
> -k
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-- 
Hervé Pagès

Program in Computational Biology
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