One "other similar location" is Github, where you can "watch" a package, and this is how I keep track of changes in the packages that I'm interested in.
Just for the interest of other R package developers, the NEWS file can be written in Markdown and I have a Makefile (https://github.com/yihui/knitr/blob/master/Makefile) to convert Markdown to R's standard NEWS format, e.g. https://github.com/yihui/knitr/blob/master/NEWS.md -> (via "make news") https://github.com/yihui/knitr/blob/master/NEWS If you do not belong to the "plain-text-is-everything" party, you may consider this format. Regards, Yihui -- Yihui Xie <xieyi...@gmail.com> Phone: 515-294-2465 Web: http://yihui.name Department of Statistics, Iowa State University 2215 Snedecor Hall, Ames, IA On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 2:47 PM, Greg Snow <538...@gmail.com> wrote: > There is already support in the packaging system for a NEWS file which > can be accessed within R using the 'news' function. What would the > changelog that you are proposing contribute or contain beyond what the > NEWS file already does? > > Creating and updating NEWS is not mandatory, but is encouraged. > Making the update of NEWS mandatory would probably not change anything > for the authors already using it, for those that don't it may cause > the author to be less likely to share or update their package rather > than bother with logging the updates (though whether that is a bad > thing or a good thing is a whole different discussion). How would you > mandate the update log? just requiring a change could result in a > lazy author adding a single line of gibberish or a statement like > "updated on this date". To enforce something more meaningful would > require some form of moderation and place additional burden where > there is already a lot of volunteer work happening. > > If a package is on R-forge (or other similar locations) then you can > get a details view of the changes between versions. Packages on CRAN > have previous versions available and there are tools that will let you > compare the differences in detail. > ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
