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38.4 Creating Packages

Internally a package is simply a gzipped tar file that contains a top level directory of any given name. This directory will in the following be referred to as package and may contain the following files:

package/CITATION

This is am optional file describing instructions on how to cite the package for publication. It will be displayed verbatim by the function citation.

package/COPYING

This is a required file containing the license of the package. No restrictions is made on the license in general. If however the package contains dynamically linked functions the license must be compatible with the GNU General Public License.

package/DESCRIPTION

This is a required file containing information about the package. See The DESCRIPTION File, for details on this file.

package/ChangeLog

This is an optional file describing all the changes made to the package source files.

package/INDEX

This is an optional file describing the functions provided by the package. If this file is not given then one with be created automatically from the functions in the package