[R-pkg-devel] How to format the NEWS.md file for CRAN submissions?

[Konrad Rudolph]

Hi Duncan,

Thanks, that‘s perfect. So the issue in my case was the ‘0.0.x’ version
instead of the package name. That’s easily fixable, as verified by running
`utils::news()` on my package.

Cheers,
Konrad

On Mon, Apr 24, 2023 at 10:54 PM Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan using gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 24/04/2023 4:39 p.m., Konrad Rudolph wrote:
> > My package is creating a CRAN check NOTE because CRAN does not like the
> way
> > my NEWS.md file [1] is formatted.
> >
> > I am largely adhering to existing conventions with regards to my NEWS.md,
> > in particular the (rather minimal) GNU conventions [2] mentioned in
> R-exts
> > as well as the conventions used by ‘pkgdown’ to compile the file into a
> web
> > page. The one peculiarity of my NEWS.md file (and where it diverges from
> > the documented ‘pkgdown’ convention) is caused by the fact that my
> package
> > has undergone a name change in the past. As a consequence, not all
> headings
> > in the NEWS.md file follow the format `# ‹pkgname› ‹version›`.
> > Consequently, the CRAN check complains
> >
> >>    Cannot extract version info from the following section titles:
> >>      modules 0.x
> >
> > I have two questions:
> >
> > 1. Am I overlooking where the CRAN requirements for NEWS files are
> > documented? As far as I can see I am not violating a documented rule.
>
> The documentation is in the ?util::news help topic.  It says:
>
> "File ‘NEWS.md’ should contain the news in Markdown (following the
> CommonMark (https://commonmark.org/) specification), with the primary
> heading level giving the version number after a prefix followed by a
> space, and optionally followed by a space and a parenthesized ISO 8601
> format date."
>
>
> > 2. What is the best way of avoiding this NOTE _without_ dropping the
> > changelog pre package name change? In particular, since ‘pkgdown’ does
> not
> > support this I would like keep these changes in a single NEWS.md file
> > rather than moving them into a separate file. Likewise, I think it would
> be
> > misleading (and hence undesirable) to change the section headings to use
> > the current package name for the old revisions.
>
> I don't think it cares what the prefix is, so you could use something
> other than the current package name there.
>
> Duncan Murdoch
>
>
> >
> > [1]
> >
> https://github.com/klmr/box/blob/9f35bd28b26306fe94ade874c2b93a89ae3f3a61/NEWS.md
> > [2] https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#NEWS-File
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Konrad
> >
>
>

-- 
Konrad Rudolph // @klmr

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