[R-wiki] Summary of the discussion before creation of R-sig-wiki

[Gabor Grothendieck]

On 1/18/06, Philippe Grosjean <phgrosjean at sciviews.org> wrote:
> Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> > What I was suggesting was not really a wiki feature but just that
> > there would be a (top level?) link to a page listing packages
> > that package authors could edit to add their own home page
> > or link to off-wiki home page.
>
> Oohh yes, now I got your point. Excellent idea! We could add a default
> "homepage" for each CRAN/Bioconductor package in the Wiki, like:
>
> packages:apackage
>
> with minimal information. Also, we could suggest a modification to
> package.skeleton() so that it makes an automatic entry like:
>
> URL: http://wiki.r-project.org/doku.php?id=packages:packagename
>
> in the DESCRIPTION file, in order to encourage package maintainers to
> use a little bit bit more that feature.
>

I noticed your default home page for pastecs on the wiki.  Not sure if
this is feasible but the other things that would be nice would be:

- link to the vignette(s), if any.   If the package does have one or more
vignettes this is often more useful than the help pages for someone
trying to figure out what it is all about.

- I am not sure if this is going too far but it would be handy if one
could access the source code online to the package.  In fact, would
it be feasible to provide svn facilities to package authors to facilitate
group projects?

- one of the problems with R packages is that there is no consistent
way to be advised of changes.  If package authors put their change
file on the wiki, and since the wiki has RSS, subscribers could
be immediately advised of any changes in packages.  I don't think
this involves any development but it requires that package authors
use it.