[R-pkg-devel] Changes to checks on NEWS?

[J C Nash]

Thanks for the info, though it seems odd that CRAN wants to
parse a plain text file that is purely for information, since it
should have no impact on the current package or any other. I suppose
there might be character set issues to check. The motive for parsing
it eludes me.

Does anyone know if there are plans to use NEWS for some purpose in
the future i.e., to actually track changes beyond package maintainer's
comments?

Cheers, and thanks again.

JN


On 2023-07-26 10:03, Ivan Krylov wrote:
> В Wed, 26 Jul 2023 09:37:38 -0400
> J C Nash <profjcnash using gmail.com> пишет:
> 
>> I'd like to avoid NOTEs if possible, and since I'm using a plain-text
>> NEWS, don't believe this should trigger one.
> 
> Plain-text NEWS files are parsed according to the rules specified in
> help(news), which is admittedly laconic in its description. If you run
> tools:::.news_reader_default('https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/optimx/NEWS')
> (or news(package = 'optimx')), you can see that R's news() already
> misunderstands some of the contents of your NEWS file.
> 
> A relatively recent change (r82543, July 2022) set
> _R_CHECK_NEWS_IN_PLAIN_TEXT_=TRUE for R CMD check --as-cran and started
> verifying that R's plain text "news reader" function could actually
> parse plain-text NEWS files without warnings or errors.
> 
> I think that if you rename NEWS to ChangeLog, R will leave the file
> alone, but CRAN will offer it to users as plain text.
>