[Rd] suggestion for R >= 3.0: computer-readable CHANGELOG

[Philippe Grosjean]

Tobias Verbeke wrote:
> Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
>> On 17 April 2009 at 10:36, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>> | I think it would have to do more than that to be useful.  It would 
>> need | to warn about a lack of an entry for the current version.  
>> Otherwise | package.skeleton would create a blank one, and that would 
>> satisfy the | check from then on.
>> | | To recognize an entry for the current version, it would need a 
>> standard | format.  But then, unless whoever put together the format 
>> was willing to | do updates to the hundreds of existing files out 
>> there, there would be a
>> I'd say use it on a go-forward basis.
> 
> I agree. For the ChangeLog, the GNU ChangeLog format could be used.
> The advantage is that there are already converters available for some
> commonly used source control management systems, such that users
> can stick with their favorite systems and comply:
> 
> For git:
> http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gnulib.git;a=blob_plain;f=build-aux/gitlog-to-changelog;hb=HEAD 
> 
> 
> For Subversion:
> http://ch.tudelft.nl/~arthur/svn2cl/
> 
> For CVS:
> http://www.red-bean.com/cvs2cl/
> 
> Always willing to participate (also in converting existing files).
> 
> Best,
> Tobias

But that gives the information at the file level. Since there is no 
constraint in R package to place the function in a given file (even 
several R functions or objects can be defined in the same file), it 
gives no useful information to track changes at the level of the functions!
Best,

Philippe

>> | Could you take a look at CRAN and Bioconductor, and count how many | 
>> packages already have a news/changelog file, and how hard it would be 
>> to | convert them to a standard format?
>>
>> I can do the count for CRAN using the account we use for cran2deb 
>> work.  I'll
>> be travelling this weekend (yay, Boston Marathon!) so please ping me next
>> week if I forget to aggregate this.
>>
>> Dirk
>>
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> 
>