a small suggestion for improving the building of packages

On 29.08.2010 22:34, Kyle Matoba wrote:

All,

I just finished the process of build a package for the 

first time and found

it characteristically (for R) very straightforward and well 

documented.

Whenever I deal with open source software I always endeavor 

to finish the

task I have in mind, and upon completing this, I then 

revisit all of the

configurations, customizing as necessary to achieve my 

goals more fully.

  The ability to achieve some minimal level of 

functionality without the need

for much filling in of configuration files, etc., is, I 

feel, important to

not scaring off the less technically inclined such as myself.

Based on this heuristic, it is my understanding that a few 

small suggestions

could make building a warning-free package as easy as running
package.skeleton(), then R CMD check, R CMD build:

- Fill in default titles for each of the '*.Rd' files in /man
- Take out the tildes in the 'examples' section of the 

'*-package.Rd' main

documentation file for the package (it seems to confuse the 

latex compiler)

- Put the lines '~~ Optionally other standard keywords, one 

per line, from

file KEYWORDS in ~~
~~ the R documentation directory ~~' into the \references{} 

section, there

is presently a warning about all text needing to be in a section.

Dear Kyle,

thanks for the suggestions. Actually, it is intended to generate 
warnings / Errors in R CMD check: We want to force package 
developers to 
document their packages probably. This way, package maintainers / 
developers have to touch each Rd file and cannot use them as 
is in order 
to pass the checks.

Best wishes,
uwe

Thanks, as always, to everyone for their hard work to keep 

my statistical

computing free and easy.

Best,

Kyle

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