Proposal: Package update log
One "other similar location" is Github, where you can "watch" a package, and this is how I keep track of changes in the packages that I'm interested in. Just for the interest of other R package developers, the NEWS file can be written in Markdown and I have a Makefile (https://github.com/yihui/knitr/blob/master/Makefile) to convert Markdown to R's standard NEWS format, e.g. https://github.com/yihui/knitr/blob/master/NEWS.md -> (via "make news") https://github.com/yihui/knitr/blob/master/NEWS If you do not belong to the "plain-text-is-everything" party, you may consider this format. Regards, Yihui -- Yihui Xie <xieyihui at gmail.com> Phone: 515-294-2465 Web: http://yihui.name Department of Statistics, Iowa State University 2215 Snedecor Hall, Ames, IA
On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 2:47 PM, Greg Snow <538280 at gmail.com> wrote:
There is already support in the packaging system for a NEWS file which can be accessed within R using the 'news' function. What would the changelog that you are proposing contribute or contain beyond what the NEWS file already does? Creating and updating NEWS is not mandatory, but is encouraged. Making the update of NEWS mandatory would probably not change anything for the authors already using it, for those that don't it may cause the author to be less likely to share or update their package rather than bother with logging the updates (though whether that is a bad thing or a good thing is a whole different discussion). How would you mandate the update log? just requiring a change could result in a lazy author adding a single line of gibberish or a statement like "updated on this date". To enforce something more meaningful would require some form of moderation and place additional burden where there is already a lot of volunteer work happening. If a package is on R-forge (or other similar locations) then you can get a details view of the changes between versions. Packages on CRAN have previous versions available and there are tools that will let you compare the differences in detail.