From dmurdoch at pair.com  Wed Jan 21 13:18:25 2004
From: dmurdoch at pair.com (Duncan Murdoch)
Date: Wed Jan 21 13:16:50 2004
Subject: [Rd] ChangeLog for R packages {was "Wish list"}
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0401210840490.2612-100000@gannet.stats>
References: <16398.14881.263753.148874@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
	<Pine.LNX.4.44.0401210840490.2612-100000@gannet.stats>
Message-ID: <n2rs00tn9hkg9eess876r2d26bjf15a7ln@4ax.com>

On Wed, 21 Jan 2004 08:48:12 +0000 (GMT), you wrote:

>Encourage or force?
>
>Quite a few packages do already have a ChangeLog, and I took the thrust of 
>this thread to be to require one or at least nag for one.  

I think it should be required, and as with Rd files, we'll check the
form but not the content.  For example, require an entry in a
specified format for the current version number, and have optional
entries for earlier version numbers.

I have no idea what the Debian ChangeLog format looks like (other than
the R example!), but I'd say if we do this, it would make sense to use
the same format as NEWS (and the Windows CHANGES file), or put those
two files into the new format.  They are currently easy to edit
manually and easy to print and read.  I don't think the same could be
said of an XML format, but I could be wrong.

Duncan Murdoch


[Rd] ChangeLog for R packages {was "Wish list"}
Duncan Murdoch