[R-pkg-devel] Nickname allowed in description when submitting to CRAN?

[Bernd.Gruber]

Thanks for the advice. Revision sounds perfectly plausible to me. I will test via winbuilder and may use it.

Regards, Bernd


==============================================================================
Dr Bernd Gruber                                              )/_          
                                                         _.--..---"-,--c_     
Professor Ecological Modelling                      \|..'           ._O__)_      
Tel: (02) 6206 3804                         ,=.    _.+   _ \..--( /           
Fax: (02) 6201 2328                           \\.-''_.-' \ (     \_           
Institute for Applied Ecology                  `'''       `\__   /\           
Faculty of Science and Technology                          ')                 
University of Canberra   ACT 2601 AUSTRALIA
Email: bernd.gruber using canberra.edu.au
WWW: bernd-gruber

Australian Government Higher Education Provider Number CRICOS #00212K 
NOTICE & DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it may contain 
confidential or copyright material and are for the attention of the addressee 
only. If you have received this email in error please notify us by email 
reply and delete it from your system. The University of Canberra accepts 
no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email.
==============================================================================

-----Original Message-----
From: Ivan Krylov <krylov.r00t using gmail.com> 
Sent: Sunday, 25 June 2023 17:35
To: Bernd.Gruber <Bernd.Gruber using canberra.edu.au>
Cc: r-package-devel using r-project.org
Subject: Re: [R-pkg-devel] Nickname allowed in description when submitting to CRAN?

В Sun, 25 Jun 2023 06:30:39 +0000
Bernd.Gruber <Bernd.Gruber using canberra.edu.au> пишет:

> I read in some stackexchange answers that it is possible to add the 
> keyword
> 
> Nickname:
> 
> to the description file. It works fine when I check the package but 
> winbuilder comes back with a note:
> 
> Unknown, possibly misspelled, fields in DESCRIPTION:
>   'Nickname'
> 
> So the question is, is there a way to have a nickname for a version of 
> an R package and if so, how would that be done.

I'm afraid it's not exactly documented (and therefore may be subject to change), but this NOTE is currently produced for every DESCRIPTION field unless it's mentioned in tools:::.get_standard_DESCRIPTION_fields() or starts with a number of prefixes (such as X-CRAN, X-schema.org, Repository/R-Forge, VCS/, and Config/).

I see "Revision" in the list of standard DESCRIPTION fields.
Conveniently, it doesn't seem to be used by base R packages. Would it be acceptable to use "Revision" instead of "Nickname"?

An alternative option would be to file a wishlist ticket asking for "Nickname" to be added to the list, but then your package will have to wait until that change propagates to the next release of R.

--
Best regards,
Ivan