[Bioc-devel] NEWS.md

Dear all,

My experience (and things may have changed since I set this up) is that
NEWS and NEWS.md serve different purposes despite a very similar
syntax. The former is used by news() and displayed on the Bioconductor
page (would NEWS.md be used if NEWS was absent?), while the one with the
md extension displays nicely (including links) on github and in pkgdown
sites.

My solution is a Makefile recipe [1] (contributed by Sebastian Gibb)
that converts NEWS.md into NEWS while updating the syntax and removing
markdown links (typically to github issues, that are automatically
expanded from #123 to a full URL via a github hook).

NEWS: #' create plain text NEWS from NEWS.md if available
        test -f ${PKGDIR}/NEWS.md && sed '/^# .*$$/d; /^## .*$$/{s/^## //g; p; s/./-/g}; /^###\+/{s/./\u&/g}; s/^##\+ //g; 1,2{/^[[:space:]]*$$/d}; s/\[\(#[0-9]\+\)\]([^)]\+)/\1/g' ${PKGDIR}/NEWS.md > ${PKGDIR}/NEWS

(where ${PKGDIR} is the package directory)

Unsure whether this helps or adds further to the confusion.

Best wishes,

Laurent

[1] https://github.com/ComputationalProteomicsUnit/maker


On 25 September 2018 13:55, Shepherd, Lori wrote:

It can be used currently.  If you remove the .md extension but keep the format in should be recognized.  As described in the ?news help page



     If 'package' is '"R"' (default), a news db is built with the news
     since the 3.0.0 release of R (corresponding to R's top-level
     'NEWS' file).  Otherwise, if the given add-on package can be found
     in the given libraries, it is attempted to read its news in
     structured form from files 'inst/NEWS.Rd', 'NEWS' or 'inst/NEWS'
     (in that order).



Please also note your news file is formatted incorrectly.  from the ?news


     The plain text 'NEWS' files in add-on packages use a variety of
     different formats; the default news reader should be capable to
     extract individual news entries from a majority of packages from
     the standard repositories, which use (slight variations of) the
     following format:

        ? Entries are grouped according to version, with version header
          "Changes in version" at the beginning of a line, followed by
          a version number, optionally followed by an ISO 8601 format
          date, possibly parenthesized.

        ? Entries may be grouped according to category, with a category
          header (different from a version header) starting at the
          beginning of a line.

        ? Entries are written as itemize-type lists, using one of 'o',
          '*', '-' or '+' as item tag.  Entries must be indented, and
          ideally use a common indentation for the item texts.




Please remove the pound sign (# ) from the header entry -  and use "Changes in version"  not "BioCor"


so for example:



# BioCor 0.99.25

* Update Vignette to just output html

# BioCor 0.99.24

* Submit the package to the Bioconductor project

# BioCor 0.99.23

* Add the Bioconductor webhook


Would become


Changes in version 0.99.25

* Update Vignette to just output html

Changes in version 0.99.24

* Submit the package to the Bioconductor project

Changes in version 0.99.23

* Add the Bioconductor webhook




Lori Shepherd

Bioconductor Core Team

Roswell Park Cancer Institute

Department of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics

Elm & Carlton Streets

Buffalo, New York 14263

--
Laurent Gatto | @lgatt0
http://lgatto.github.io/