roxygen2 not fully updating DESCRIPTION file
r, roxygen2
Solution
roxygen2 is working just as intended, but I experienced the same confusion when I first used it to document a package. The important bit to understand is that there are a couple of different package-describing files in the mix.
When the roxygen markup in `rlandscape-package.R` is processed, it produces a file `rlandscape-package.Rd` in the man directory of your source package. This in turn produces the documentation you see when you type `?rlandscape` or `?"rlandscape-package"`.
The `DESCRIPTION` file in the top directory of your source tree is a completely separate beast. Although it happens to produce a help file that you can see (via `help(package="rlandscape")`), it has many other more important roles in directing package production. The only way that it is touched/affected by roxygen2 is that the `collate_roclet()` function (executed when you `roxygenize()` your package) will perform merges with the Collate field in a pre-existing `DESCRIPTION` file (as describe on p 10 of this pdf).
The main take home message is that even when using roxygen2, if you want to make changes to your `DESCRIPTION` file, you'll need to do it by directly editing it.
Problem
I'm making my first package `rlandscape`, using Roxygen2 and trying to follow the plain Roxygen vignette since Roxygen2 doesn't have one. As in the vignette (page 3), I created a file called `rlandscape-package.R` that contains nothing but package documentation. In the vignette, they say each Roxygen description block must be followed by a statement, even header material that describes a le or package in lieu of a specific function. roxygen() is provided as a NOOP (null statement) to stand in for such cases. but if I follow the description block with `roxygen()` a call to `package.skeleton` produces `Error in eval(expr, envir, enclos) : could not find function "roxygen"`. So I've tried leaving the `roxygen()` call out entirely as well as replacing it with `NA`, both of which seem to produce the same results: `package.skeleton()` works successfully (including `rlandscape-package.R` as one of the `code_files` arguments), and I can then `roxygenize` ``` > roxygenize("rlandscape", roxygen.dir = "rlandscape") Updating collate directive in /Users/Gregor/Dropbox/rlandscape/rlandscape/DESCRIPTION Updating namespace directives Writing plot.landscape.Rd Writing rland.Rd Writing rland.gui.Rd Writing makePoints.Rd Writing rCluster.Rd Writing rlandscape-package.Rd Writing rlandscape.Rd ``` which seems to run successfully, but the DESCRIPTION file has the "Collate" field appended, but is otherwise unchanged from what `package.skeleton` created. Why isn't the rest of the description file updated?