[R-pkg-devel] How to refer to COPYRIGHTS and AUTHORS extra files in DESCRIPTION

[git demont]

Hi all,

I am developing a package called 'IFC'.
https://github.com/gitdemont/IFC/
<https://github.com/gitdemont/IFC/tree/v0.0.7>

Last submission (v0.0.7) was almost the final one to get it CRAN
https://github.com/gitdemont/IFC/tree/v0.0.7
It was manually checked and it should be accepted if I removed a dontrun
(that I unfortunately forgot).

For the next submission ( I hope it will be the good one ), in addition to
fixing the dontrun, I would like to include a small modification that was
not asked. I would like to avoid another round of submission/review by
introducing an issue that was not here. In DESCRIPTION of 'IFC', I am
inviting users to refer to files for copyrights and authorship. "See file
inst/COPYRIGHTS and file inst/AUTHORS for a list of copyright holders and
authors"

However, I am not sure whether I should say 'inst/COPYRIGHTS' and
'inst/AUTHORS' because these files are in the 'inst/' directory of the
built tar.gz, or if I should only refer to 'COPYRIGHTS' and 'AUTHORS'
(without inst/) because once installed these files will be at the root of
IFC library directory.
The same question olds for "Copyright: file inst/COPYRIGHTS".

In CRAN policies, one can read:
"Where copyrights are held by an entity other than the package authors,
this should preferably be indicated via ‘cph’ roles in the ‘Authors using R’
field, or using a ‘Copyright’ field (if necessary referring to an
inst/COPYRIGHTS file)."
In 'RcppMsgPack' for instance we have:
- in the description: "See the files 'COPYRIGHTS' and 'AUTHORS' for a full
list of copyright holders and contributors to 'msgpack-c'."
- in the copyrights: "inst/COPYRIGHTS".

Best,
Yohann

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