From andy_liaw at merck.com  Fri Jun 25 01:33:00 2004
From: andy_liaw at merck.com (Liaw, Andy)
Date: Fri Jun 25 01:33:21 2004
Subject: [Rd] news file included in source but not binary package
Message-ID: <3A822319EB35174CA3714066D590DCD504AF7F71@usrymx25.merck.com>

> From: Friedrich Leisch
> 
[snip]
> You might want to take a look at the system.file() function, that
> reduces the above quite considerably :-)

Indeed:

news <- function(package=NULL, lib.loc=NULL) {
    if (is.null(package)) {
        newsfile <- file.path(R.home(), "NEWS")
        title <- paste("NEWS for R-",
                       paste(R.version[c("major", "minor")], collapse="."))
    } else {
        newsfile <- file.path(system.file(package=package, lib.loc=lib.loc),
                              "NEWS")
        title <- paste("NEWS for", package)
    }
    file.show(newsfile, title=title)
}

[One might want to add the pager argument as in file.show.]
 
> But to get to the heart of the email (something similar was proposed
> by Greg Warnes a few weeks ago): We should definetely provide a simple
> mechanism to see the latest changes in a package.
> 
> Question: I am aware of files calles NEWS and ChangeLog (or CHANGELOG,
> etc.) holding the relevant information ... are there any others we
> want/need to respect?

Yes, I do recall the thread that Greg started.  This is sort of trying to
get it going again...  Could we just settle on a standard name and be done
with it?  Since base R uses NEWS, why not just use that for all packages,
and use NEWS.platform as Duncan suggested (in the top-level directory,
rather than platform-specific directories)?

[A saying I've heard mentioned in an industry-standard committee meeting:
`Demoncracy is not about what you want, but what you can live with.']

Best,
Andy


> best,
> fritz
> 
>


[Rd] news file included in source but not binary package
Liaw, Andy