devtools 1.11.0

Infrastructure helpers

• create_description() now sets Encoding: UTF-8. This helps non-English
  package authors (#1123).
• All use_ function have been overhauled to be more consistent, particularly
  arround notification. Most functions now also ask to overwrite if a file
  already exists (#1074).
• use_coverage() now adds covr to "Suggests", rather than recommending you
  install it explicitly in .travis.yml.
• use_cran_badge() now uses HTTPS URL (@krlmlr, #1124).
• use_github() now confirms that you've picked a good title and description
  (#1092) and prints the url of the repo (#1063).
• use_news(), and use_test() open the files in RStudio (if you're using
  it and have the rstudioapi package installed).
• use_testthat() tells you what it's doing (#1056).
• use_travis() generates a template compatible with the newest R-travis.
• use_readme_md() creates a basic README.md template (#1064).
• use_revdep() has an updated template for the new revdep check
  system (#1090, @krlmlr).
• Removed the deprecated use_coveralls(), add_rstudio_project(),
  add_test_infrastructure(), and add_travis().

Checks and and release()

• check() now always succeeds (instead of throwing an error when
  R CMD check finds an ERROR), returning an object that summarises
  the check failures.
• check() gains run_dont_test and manual arguments to control whether or
  not \donttest{} tests are tested, or manuals are built. This defaults to
  FALSE, but release() runs check with it set to TRUE (#1071; #1087,
  @krlmlr).
• The cleanup argument to check() is deprecated: it now always returns
  the path to the check directory.
• check_built() allows you to run R CMD check on an already built package.
• check_cran() suppresses X11 with DISPLAY = "".
• release() has been tweaked to improve the order of the questions,
  and to ensure that you're ok with problems. It warns if both inst/NEWS.Rd
  and NEWS.md exist (@krlmlr, #1135), doesn't throw error if Git head is
  detached (@krlmlr, #1136).
• release() gains an args argument to control build options, e.g.
  to allow passing args = "--compact-vignettes=both" for packages with
  heavy PDF vignettes (@krlmlr, #1077).
• system_check() gains new arguments path to controls the working directory
  of the command, and throw to control whether or not it throws an error
  on command failure. env has been renamed to the more explicit env_vars.

Revdep checks

revdep_check() has been overhauled. All revdep_ functions now work like
other devtools functions, taking a path to the package as the first argument.

revdep_check() now saves its results to disk as check/check.rds, and the other revdep() functions read from that cache. This also allows you to resume a partial run with revdep_check_resume(). This should be a big time saver if something goes unexpected wrong in the middle of the checks. You can blow away the cache and start afresh with revdep_check_reset().

revdep_check_save_summary() now creates README.md to save one level of clicking in github. It also creates a problems.md that contains only results for only packages that had warnings or errors. Each problem is limited to at most 25 lines of output - this avoids lengthy output for failing examples. revdep_check_print_problems() prints a bulleted list of problems, suitable for inclusion in your cran-comments.md.

Summary results are reported as they come in, every then messages you'll get a message giving elapsed and estimated remaining time.

An experimental revdep_email() emails individual maintainers with their R CMD check summary results (#1014). See testthat and dplyr for example usage.

There were a handful of smaller fixes:

• revdep_check() doesn't complain about missing git2r package anymore
  (#1068, @krlmlr).
• Package index caches for revdep_check() now time out after 30 minutes.
• revdep_check_save_logs() has been removed - it is just not that useful.
• revdep_check_summary() has been removed - it never should have been
  part of the exported API.

Other improvements

• Devtools now uses new gcc toolchain on windows, if installed (@jimhester).
• install_git() now allows you to pass credentials to git2r to specify
  specific ssh credentials (@onlymee, #982)
• load_all() now sources all test helpers if you use testthat. This makes it
  much easier to interactively run tests (#1125). load_all() also correctly
  handles unix and windows subdirectories within R (@gaborcsardi, #1102)
• build_win() defaults to only R-devel, since this is most commonly
  what you want.
• Help shims now inform you that you're using development documentation
  (#1049).
• git_sha1() Fix fetching the latest git commit so that it also works
  for shallow git clones, i.e. git clones which make use of depth.
  (#1048, #1046, @nparley)