[R] Proposal: Package update log

[Yihui Xie]

One "other similar location" is Github, where you can "watch" a
package, and this is how I keep track of changes in the packages that
I'm interested in.

Just for the interest of other R package developers, the NEWS file can
be written in Markdown and I have a Makefile
(https://github.com/yihui/knitr/blob/master/Makefile) to convert
Markdown to R's standard NEWS format, e.g.

https://github.com/yihui/knitr/blob/master/NEWS.md
-> (via "make news")
https://github.com/yihui/knitr/blob/master/NEWS

If you do not belong to the "plain-text-is-everything" party, you may
consider this format.

Regards,
Yihui
--
Yihui Xie <xieyihui at gmail.com>
Phone: 515-294-2465 Web: http://yihui.name
Department of Statistics, Iowa State University
2215 Snedecor Hall, Ames, IA


On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 2:47 PM, Greg Snow <538280 at gmail.com> wrote:
> There is already support in the packaging system for a NEWS file which
> can be accessed within R using the 'news' function.  What would the
> changelog that you are proposing contribute or contain beyond what the
> NEWS file already does?
>
> Creating and updating NEWS is not mandatory, but is encouraged.
> Making the update of NEWS mandatory would probably not change anything
> for the authors already using it, for those that don't it may cause
> the author to be less likely to share or update their package rather
> than bother with logging the updates (though whether that is a bad
> thing or a good thing is a whole different discussion).  How would you
> mandate the update log?  just requiring a change could result in a
> lazy author adding a single line of gibberish or a statement like
> "updated on this date".  To enforce something more meaningful would
> require some form of moderation and place additional burden where
> there is already a lot of volunteer work happening.
>
> If a package is on R-forge (or other similar locations) then you can
> get a details view of the changes between versions.  Packages on CRAN
> have previous versions available and there are tools that will let you
> compare the differences in detail.
>