[Rd] Suggestion: Add DESCRIPTION 'Date' to R CMD check log header

[Kurt Hornik]

>>>>> Martin Maechler writes:

> Hi Henrik
>>>>> "HB" == Henrik Bengtsson <hb at stat.berkeley.edu>
>>>>>     on Tue, 14 Sep 2010 18:26:31 -0700 writes:

HB> Hi,
HB> in R CMD check, the version of the package being checked is reported, e.g.

HB> Thu Sep  9 05:02:30 2010: Checking package R.utils (SVN revision 399) ...
HB> * using log directory ‘/srv/R/R.check/R-devel/PKGS/R.utils.Rcheck’
HB> * using R version 2.12.0 Under development (unstable) (2010-09-07 r52876)
HB> * using platform: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu (64-bit)
HB> * using session charset: UTF-8
HB> * checking for file ‘R.utils/DESCRIPTION’ ... OK
HB> * this is package ‘R.utils’ version ‘1.5.2’
HB> ...

HB> I'd like to request/suggest that the 'Date' in the DESCRIPTION file is
HB> also added, e.g.

HB> * this is package ‘R.utils’ version ‘1.5.2’ ('2010-09-14')


HB> WHY?
HB> This would be particular useful when you work toward sites like
HB> R-forge and Bioconductor when you may commit your day's work on
HB> package when you update the 'Date' but you do not really want to
HB> update the 'Version' because you're going to put in more work
HB> tomorrow.  With the 'Date' information you'll be able to see what
HB> "version" of your updates have been checked by the servers.  I
HB> understand that this may be an odd process to follow even for devel
HB> branches and you may argue that you should always bump the version
HB> number whenever you do an SVN commit (e.g. '1.5.2.1' for temporary
HB> commits).  Either way, I find it useful to see the date as well.

> I agree that this is useful.
> Of course, for all those cases, where there's no  "Date:",
> nothing (i.e. no "()") should be written.

> If you (or someone) provide patches against  R-devel
> ( https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/ )
> and they pass 'make check-all', I'd add this feature.

But pls not against the Date field by default:

R-Forge packages record their revision in their package metadata.

CRAN packages record Date/Publication in their metadata.

Not sure about BioC ...

-k