Issue tracking in packages [was: Re: [R] change in read.spss, package foreign?]

On Sat, 10 Sep 2005 19:06:51 +0200,
Martin Maechler (MM) wrote:

"TL" == Thomas Lumley <tlumley at u.washington.edu>
    on Sat, 10 Sep 2005 09:32:29 -0700 (PDT) writes:

>>> Standard location or a mechachanism like the one you
  >>> describe are both similar amount of work (and not much at
  >>> all), the HTML pages are generated by perl and I have the
  >>> parsed DESCRIPTION file there, i.e., using a fixed name
  >>> or the value of the Changelog field is basically the
  >>> same.
  >>> 

  TL> In which case a Changlog entry in DESCRIPTION would be a
  TL> very nice addition, and would have the advantage of not
  TL> requiring changes to packages.

  > yes *and* does allow slightly more flexibility with almost
  > no cost, as Fritz confirmed.

Well, as Kurt pointed out in another (?) thread "CRAN is not the R
universe", and, e.g., Seth might have another opinion when it comes to
BioC administration. But I don't think you can (or should) do too much
sensible computations on packages without having parsed the
DESCRIPTION file, so the "almost no cost" statement should be pretty
safe.


  > And, BTW, Gabor,  NEWS and ChangeLog are not at all the same
  > thing and it would be silly to urge users to one of them.
  > At least 'ChangeLog' is a well defined format for emacs users
  > that can very quickly be updated semi-automagically
  > ("C-x 4 a" when you're in file  foo.R with function myfun(.)
  >  autogenerates a neat entry in a ChangeLog file);
  > but then really people should be allowed to use other formats
  > for good reasons.

I fully agree.

.f