[Rd] Convenience Request: Add revision numbers to "What's New" change list

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 19/07/2022 5:42 a.m., Avraham Adler wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> When deciding whether or not to update an R installation—either
> patched or devel—I think it would be valuable to see the revisions in
> which the updates/patches were applied. For those with linked PRs, if
> one has a Bugzilla account, one can often find the revision in the
> final note; however, not everyone has a Bugzilla account. This is a
> very minor request, of course, solely a quality-of-life issue, but I
> think it would be appreciated.

I think that would be hard; news entries often corresponds to multiple 
revisions as bugs are found and fixed. But there are ways to see what's 
happening.

One is to watch the daily report of changes to the NEWS file at

https://developer.r-project.org/RSSfeeds.html

(These are RSS feeds, but you can also just click on a version to view 
all changes on a web page.)

You can also use "svn blame" for this.  For example,

$ svn blame doc/NEWS.Rd | less

  72400    murdoch % -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
  72400    murdoch 
\newcommand{\Rlogo}{\if{html}{\figure{../../html/Rlogo.svg}{op
tions: class="toplogo" alt="[R 
logo]"}}\if{latex}{\figure{Rlogo.pdf}{options: wi
dth=0.5in}}}
  72400    murdoch
  72400    murdoch \name{NEWS}
  72400    murdoch \title{R News}
  72400    murdoch \encoding{UTF-8}
  72400    murdoch
  78213   maechler \section{\Rlogo CHANGES IN R-devel}{
  81992     ripley   \subsection{SIGNIFICANT USER-VISIBLE CHANGES}{
  81987     ripley     \itemize{
  82459     ripley       \item Calling \code{&&} or \code{||} with LHS 
or (if evaluated) RHS of
  82459     ripley       length greater than one is now always an error, 
with a report of
  82459     ripley       the form
  82445     ripley \preformatted{    'length = 4' in coercion to 
'logical(1)'}
  82265     ripley
  82445     ripley       Environment variable 
\env{_R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_LOGIC2_} no longer has
  82445     ripley       any effect.

This shows that the news item for the top entry "Calling \code{&&} or 
\code{||} with LHS or  ..." was most recently edited in r82459, with an 
earlier edit in r82445.  I'd guess the latter rev is the one you want; 
here's what the log shows for it:

$ svn log -v -r82445
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r82445 | ripley | 2022-06-02 05:56:18 -0400 (Thu, 02 Jun 2022) | 1 line
Changed paths:
    M /trunk/doc/NEWS.Rd
    M /trunk/doc/manual/R-ints.texi
    M /trunk/src/include/Defn.h
    M /trunk/src/main/coerce.c
    M /trunk/src/main/errors.c
    M /trunk/src/main/eval.c
    M /trunk/src/main/logic.c
    M /trunk/tests/reg-tests-1d.R

remove _R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_LOGIC2_

but it also shows that it is often the case that changes are made in 
multiple steps.

Duncan Murdoch