[Rd] Minimum requirements for package submission

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 28 August 2013 at 09:44, Hadley Wickham wrote:
| >> Related rant: I really wish we had "CHANGES" file, or a section in the
| >> manuals. It is virtually impossible to look at a current "Writing R
| >> Extensions" manual, and a previous one, in order to get a succinct view of
| >> what changed.  Having to diff the NEWS files, or glancing at commit logs
| >> via
| >> the RCS is a very poor proxy.
| >
| > I don't understand the difference between the CHANGES file you are asking
| > for and the NEWS file.  Do you want something in purely chronological order,
| > rather than categorized as NEWS is?
| 
| I think Dirk was talking about a CHANGES/NEWS file for "Writing R extensions"

Yup. In the sense of "something to look at to see what one may need to change".

Eg for Debian, the "Policy" document has a version number making discussion /
comparison and reference more tangible.  Also, if/when an update is made, an
'upgrade checklist' is provided -- see eg [1] for the most recent annoucement
[2] for the policy manual web presence, and [3] for the complete checklist
with a roll-back history.

I am not suggesting this exact format. I am merely pointing that it
(currently) takes a couple of extra steps to stay on top of required changes,
which in turn leads to everybody just uploading to CRAN as a trial, which in
turn overburdens the CRAN maintainers.  Seems suboptimal to me.

Dirk

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/09/msg00006.html
[2] http://www.debian.org/doc/devel-manuals#policy    
[3] http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/upgrading-checklist.txt

-- 
Dirk Eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org | http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com