11 The INSTALL file

An INSTALL file does not have to be included with the package. An INSTALL file is utilized for specifying external system requirements needed. It should be used in combination with the SystemRequirements field of the Description file. This file should contain installation instructions for the required system dependency.

Specifying this requirement does not guarantee that Bioconductor will agree to install the external system requirement. It is encouraged to discuss any additional system requirements on the bioc-devel@r-project.org before development.

System requirements should never be exclusive to a particular version. Maintainers are expected to have their package work with whatever the current version of external software is available.