08-news.Rmd

# News

## During development

Each user-facing change should be accompanied by a bullet in `NEWS.md`. The goal of the bullet is to:

* Briefly describe the change, starting with the name of function. This can be
  similar to the commit message, but often the commit message will be developer 
  facing, and the bullet will be user facing.

* Link to the related issue, if present.

* Credit the author, if the contribution was a PR.

```
* `drop_na()` no longer drops columns (@jennybryan, #245), and works with 
  list-cols (#280). Equivalent of `NA` in a list column is any empty 
  (length 0) data structure.
```

Each new bullet should be added to the top of the file (under the version heading).

It is not necessary to describe changes minor documentation changes.

## Before release

Prior to release, the NEWS file needs to be thoroughly proof read and groomed. If there are many bullets, they should be grouped in to related areas using level 2 headings (`##`). Typically, this will include a catch-all "Minor improvements and bug fixes". 

If there are API breaking changes, these should appear at the top, including a description of the symptoms of the change, and what is needed to fix it.

```
## Breaking changes

* `separate()` now correctly uses -1 to refer to the far right position, 
  instead of -2. If you depended on this behaviour, you'll need to condition
  on `packageVersion("tidyr") > "0.7.2"`
```

Within a section, bullets should be ordered alphabetically by the first function mentioned (which should be near the start of the sentence)