• Don't set non-portable compiler flags on Solaris.
• The file template.Rproj is now correctly installed and the function use_rstudio works as it should. (#595, @hmalmedal)
• The function use_rcpp will now create the file src/.gitignore with the correct wildcards. (@hmalmedal)

devtools 1.6

Tool templates and create()

• create() no longer generates man/ directory - roxygen2 now does this automatically. It also no longer generates an package-level doc template. If you want this, use use_package_doc(). It also makes a dummy namespace so that you can build & reload without running document() first.
• New use_data() makes it easy to include data in a package, either in data/ (for exported datasets) or in R/sysdata.rda (for internal data). (#542)
• New use_data_raw() creates data-raw/ directory for reproducible generation of data/ files (#541).
• New use_package() allows you to set dependencies (#559).
• New use_package_doc() sets up an Roxygen template for package-level docs.
• New use_rcpp() sets up a package to use Rcpp.
• use_travis() now figures out your github username and repo so it can construct the markdown for the build image. (#546)
• New use_vignette() creates a draft vignette using Rmarkdown (#572).
• renamed add_rstudio_project() to use_rstudio(), add_travis() to use_travis(), add_build_ignore() to use_build_ignore(), and add_test_infrastructure() to use_testthat() (old functions are aliased to new)

The release process

• You can add arbitrary extra questions to release() by defining a function release_questions() in your package. Your release_questions() should return a character vector of questions to ask (#451).
• release() uses new CRAN submission process, as implemented by submit_cran() (#430).

Package installation

• All install_* now use the same code and store much useful metadata. Currently only session_info() takes advantage of this information, but it will allow the development of future tools like generic update functions.
• Vignettes are no longer installed by default because they potentally require all suggested packages to also be installed. Use build_vignettes = TRUE to force building and to install all suggested packages (#573).
• install_bitbucket() has been bought into alignment with install_github(): this means you can now specify repos with the compact username/repo@ref syntax. The username is now deprecated.
• install_git() has been simplified and many of the arguments have changed names for consistency with metadata for other package installs.
• install_github() has been considerably improved:
  • username is deprecated - please include the user in the repo name: rstudio/shiny, hadley/devtools etc.
  • dependencies = TRUE is no longer forced (regression in 1.5) (@krlmlr, #462).
  • Deprecated parameters auth_user, branch, pull and password have all been removed.
  • New host argument which allows you to install packages from github enterprise (#410, #506).
  • The GitHub API is used to download archive file (@krlmlr, #466) - this makes it less likely to break in the future.
  • To download a specified pull request, use ref = github_pull(...) (@krlmlr, #509). To install the latest release, use "user/repo@*release" or ref = github_release() (@krlmlr, #350).
• install_gitorious() has been bought into alignment with install_github(): this means you can now specify repos with the compact username/repo@ref syntax. You must now always supply user (project) name and repo.
• install_svn() lets you install an R package from a subversion repository (assuming you have subversion installed).
• decompress() and hence install_url() now work when the downloaded file decompresses without additional top-level directory (#537).

Other minor improvements and bug fixes

• If you're using Rstudio, and you you're trying to build a binary package without the necessary build tools, Rstudio will prompt to download and install the right thing. (#488)
• Commands are no longer run with LC_ALL=C - this no longer seems necessary (#507).
• build(binary = TRUE) creates an even-more-temporary package library avoid conflicts (#557).
• check_dir() no longer fails on UNC paths (#522).
• check_devtools() also checks for dependencies on development versions of packages (#534).
• load_all() no longer fails on partial loading of a package containing S4 or RC classes (#577).
• On windows, find_rtools() is now run on package load, not package attach.
• help(), ?, and system.file() are now made available when a package is loaded with load_all(), even if the devtools package isn't attached.
• httr 0.3 required (@krlmlr, #466).
• load_all() no longer gives an error when objects listed as exports are missing.
• Shim added for library.dynam.unload().
• loaded_packages() now returns package name and path it was loaded from. (#486)
• The parenvs() function has been removed from devtools, because is now in the pryr package.
• missing_s3() uses a better heuristic for determining if a function is a S3 method (#393).
• New session_info() provides useful information about your R session. It's a little more focussed than sessionInfo() and includes where packages where installed from (#526).
• rstudioapi package moved from suggests to imports, since it's always needed (it's job is to figure out if rstudio is available, #458)
• Implemented own version utils::unzip() that throws error if command fails and doesn't print unneeded messages on non-Windows platforms (#540).
• Wrote own version of write.dcf() that doesn't butcher whitespace and fieldnames.

Removed functionality

• The fresh argument to test() has been removed - this is best done by the editor since it can run the tests in a completely clean environment by starting a new R session.

devtools 1.5

Four new functions make it easier to add useful infrastructure to packages:

• add_test_infrastructure() will create test infrastructure for a new package. It is called automatically from test() if no test directories are found, the session is interactive and you agree.
• add_rstudio_project() adds an Rstudio project file to your package. create() gains an rstudio argument which will automatically create an Rstudio project in the package directory. It defaults to TRUE: if you don't use Rstudio, just delete the file.
• add_travis() adds a basic travis template to your package. .travis.yml is automatically added to .Rbuildignore to avoid including it in the built package.
• add_build_ignore() makes it easy to add files to .Rbuildignore, correctly escaping special characters

Two dependencies were incremented:

• devtools requires at least R version 3.0.2.
• document() requires at least roxygen2 version 3.0.0.

Minor improvements

• build_win() now builds R-release and R-devel by default (@krlmlr, #438). It also gains parameter args, which is passed on to build() (@krlmlr, #421).
• check_doc() now runs document() automatically.
• install() gains thread argument which allows you to install multiple packages in parallel (@mllg, #401). threads argument to check_cran() now defaults to getOption("Ncpus")
• install_deps(deps = T) no longer installs all dependencies of dependencies (#369).
• install_github() now prefers personal access tokens supplied to auth_token rather than passwords (#418, @jeroenooms).
• install_github() now defaults to dependencies = TRUE so you definitely get all the packages you need to build from source.
• devtools supplies its own version of system.file() so that when the function is called from the R console, it will have special behavior for packages loaded with devtools.
• devtools supplies its own version of help and ?, which will search devtools-loaded packages as well as normally-loaded packages.

Bug fixes

• check_devtools() no longer called by check() because the relevant functionality is now included in R CMD CHECK and it was causing false positives (#446).
• install_deps(TRUE) now includes packages listed in VignetteBuilder (#396)
• build() no longer checks for pdflatex when building vignettes, as many modern vignettes don't need it (#398). It also uses --no-build-vignettes for >3.0.0 compatibility (#391).
• release() does a better job of opening your email client if you're inside of Rstudio (#433).
• check() now correctly reports the location of the R CMD check output when called with a custom check_dir. (Thanks to @brentonk)
• check_cran() records check times for each package tested.
• Improved default DESCRIPTION file created by create_description(). (Thanks to @ncarchedi, #428)
• Fixed bug in install_github() that prevented installing a pull request by supplying repo = "username/repo#pull". (#388)
• explicitly specify user agent when querying user name and ref for pull request in install_github. (Thanks to Kirill Müller, #405)
• install_github() now removes blank lines found in a package DESCRIPTION file, protecting users from the vague error: contains a blank line error. (#394)
• with_options() now works, instead of throwing an error (Thanks to @krlmlr, #434)

• Fixed bug in wd() when path was ommitted. (#374)
• Fixed bug in dev_help() that prevented it from working when not using Rstudio.
• source_gist() respects new github policy by sending user agent (hadley/devtools)
• install_github() now takes repo names of the form [username/]repo[/subdir][@ref|#pull] - this is now the recommended form to specify username, subdir, ref and/or pull for install_github. (Thanks to Kirill Müller, #376)

Installation improvements

• install() now respects the global option keep.source.pkgs.
• install() gains a build_vignettes which defaults to TRUE, and ensures that vignettes are built even when doing a local install. It does this by forcing local = FALSE if the package has vignettes, so R CMD build can follow the usual process. (#344)
• install_github() now takes repo names of the form username/repo - this is now the recommended form for install_github if your username is not hadley ;)
• install_github() now adds details on the source of the installed package (e.g. repository, SHA1, etc.) to the package DESCRIPTION file. (Thanks to JJ Allaire)
• Adjusted install_version() to new meta data structure on CRAN. (Thanks to Kornelius Rohmeyer)
• Fixed bug so that install_version() works with version numbers that contain hyphens. (Thanks to Kornelius Rohmeyer)
• install_deps() is now exported, making it easier to install the dependencies of a package.

Other minor improvements

• build(binary = TRUE) now no longer installs the package as a side-effect. (#335)
• build_github_devtools() is a new function which makes it easy for Windows users to upgrade to the development version of devtools.
• create_description() does a better job of combining defaults and user specified options. (#332)
• install() also installs the dependencies that do not have the required versions; besides, the argument dependencies now works like install.packages() (in previous versions, it was essentially c("Depends", "Imports", "LinkingTo")) (thanks, Yihui Xie, #355)
• check() and check_cran() gain new check_dir argument to control where checking takes place (#337)
• check_devtools() no longer incorrectly complains about a vignettes/ directory
• Decompression of zip files now respects getOption("unzip") (#326)
• dev_help will now use the Rstudio help pane, if you're using a recent version of Rstudio (#322)
• Release is now a little bit smarter: if it's a new package, it'll ask you to read and agree to the CRAN policies; it will only ask about dependencies if it has any.
• source_url() (and source_gist()) accept SHA1 prefixes.
• source_gist() uses the github api to reliably locate the raw gist. Additionally it now only attempts to source files with .R or .r extensions, and gains a quiet argument. (#348)
• Safer installation of source packages, which were previously extracted directly into the temp directory; this could be a problem if directory names collide. Instead, source packages are now extracted into unique subdirectories.