R devel - Apr 1999 - add-on packages

It looks like we'll have a 0.64 release by next week.  This should be a
good time for bringing the add-on packages up-to-date as well.  Fixes
should include

* eliminate src-c

* provide complete DESCRIPTION, INDEX and TITLE files with consistent
formatting.  Also please be specific about the copyright/license info.

* provide data indices where applicable (last time I counted, 26 pkgs
had data but only 9 a data index).

The preferred name for the data index is now `00Index' rather than
`index.doc'.  If data files are found but no index, then data() will
give a WARNING when used for listing.

Also, there is now a subdirectory `inst' the contents of which will be
copied recursively (using `cp -r') to the root target dir upon
installation.  This may be useful in particular for copyright info etc
that should be installed along with the package.

It would be great if maintainers could rework their packages
accordingly, which should not be too much effort.  (Includes work for me
too ...)

Thanks,
-k
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Some further infos/thoughts/... on our add-on packages.

Here are the results of running a simple counting script on my system
(at home, not all available packages installed there):

Packages found:            59
  with INDEX               59
  with TITLE               59
  with DESCRIPTION         26
    with License info      21
  with data                25
    with data/00Index      11
    with data/index.doc     6

This is quite alarming (of course, the standard packages from the main
distribution currently do not have DESCRIPTION files)!  PLEASE update
your packages, the DESCRIPTION file is definitely needed!

(Also, some packages still have old-style .doc data documentation.)

Fritz and I are thinking about automating an add-on checking mechanism.
In addition to the above, info on which packages pass `R CMD check' etc
could be provided on a regular basis.

We are also thinking about automating the package build process (e.g.,
`R CMD build pkg').  An `INDEX' and a data index could be generated
automatically.  At build time, comparison of object usage as is and as
documented could be done.  Information on undocumented objects could be
provided.  `R CMD check' could be run.  And so on ...

Btw, re `INDEX': currently, if I document several objects in one Rd
file, I get only one INDEX entry (which is obtained from \title{}).
This is not satisfactory.  Maybe we should have something like
	\index{NAME}{TEXT}
???

I also want to propose adding a "Maintainer" field in DESCRIPTION.  In
the future we could use this info for both automatic checking and bug
reporting.

Another interesting fact is data duplication.  More than 10 data sets
show up in more than one package.  Maybe we should add these to the main
distribution then?

Finally (again?), please make sure that your packages do not mask system
features.

Thanks,
-k
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