Scoping {meta.lintr}

[IndrajeetPatil]

Preamble

We decided that linting DESCRIPTION is out-of-scope for {lintr} (#889).

Note

Name {meta.lintr} is placeholder, but it would be nice for the chosen name to reference the fact that this linter package is targeting meta-data about packages; DESCRIPTION is only one type of meta-data, and we could cover other files in future (e.g. CITATION).

Metadata smells

• Sort dependencies alphabetically in Imports, Suggests, and Depends
  (usethis::use_tidy_dependencies() does this)
• Adding Language field (for spell check, either via {spelling} or some other solution)
• Recommending lazy loading data if data is shipped in the package (LazyData: true)
• Recommending which minimum required R version should be used depending on the R version requirements of hard/runtime dependencies
• Omitting hard-coded Date field in DESCRIPTION
• Including URL field to specify documentation website or source code repository location
• Including BugReports field to specify where bugs can be reported

Out-of-scope

Anything that is already flagged by R CMD check (e.g. setting LazyData: true when there is no data in the package), since it's redundant as most CI systems for R packages are set up to run both R CMD check and linter.

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P.S. Feel free to edit and update the issue as you think of more lints that could be covered in this package.

[AshesITR]

Maybe add recommendations from R Packages (https://r-pkgs.org) such as use data-raw or inst/data-raw to produce package data.