From murdoch at stats.uwo.ca  Mon Jul 24 12:32:03 2006
From: murdoch at stats.uwo.ca (Duncan Murdoch)
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 06:32:03 -0400
Subject: [Rd] Making a patch
In-Reply-To: <20060723220410.GI59927@ms.unimelb.edu.au>
References: <20060723220410.GI59927@ms.unimelb.edu.au>
Message-ID: <44C4A1A3.1000905@stats.uwo.ca>

On 7/23/2006 6:04 PM, Andrew Robinson wrote:
> Dear R developers,
> 
> is there a preferred format or strategy for making a patch to
> contribute to a package that is maintained by R-core?  Berwin Turlach
> and I have written a very minor extension to lmeControl to allow it to
> pass an argument to nlminb for the maximum number of evaluations of
> the objective function.  I've edited the nlme/R/lme.R and
> nlme/man/lmeControl.Rd files.  I can diff the files, but the options
> seem numerous.  I haven't been able to find any hinst on the preferred
> approach.  Any advice would be welcomed.

Gregor pointed out a description of the suggested format.  But the 
strategy is also important:  in order for your patch to be incorporated, 
you need to convince someone to accept it.  To do that, you should post 
the following sort of information along with your patch:

  - what the patch does
  - what problem it solves
  - what problems it may cause

You should also make sure your patch is complete, e.g. if it changes 
lmeControl, then you should also include a patch to the documentation 
for lmeControl.

Duncan Murdoch



[Rd] Making a patch
Duncan Murdoch