Allow use_news_md() in non-package projects

[DanChaltiel]

Hi,

As stated in Best practices in statistical computing (Sanchez 2021), all projects should have a NEWS file that tracks down big changes:

Versioning systems do a great job of tracking each little change to the code. However, for a more holistic view, major changes and updates to the code should be noted in a text file that is a component of the documentation, called the NEWS file.

Would it be possible to remove the limitation in use_news_md()?

[jennybc]

The code inside use_news_md() really is quite specific to a package. I'm not sure what the equivalent logic would be for a generic project (meaning: I'm not sure there is such a well-defined notion of how NEWS.md should be structured). So I believe it's best to only provide support for a package.

[DanChaltiel]

I think a blank NEWS.md file would be enough to start with, and I hope the definition will be more consensual in the future.
My point is that this file is a good thing to have (cf. the article) and we should encourage its use. Forbidding it in usethis gives the opposite message.

FYI, I raised this issue as I am developing a package that will have an init()-like function that will start a project with a defined, reproducible structure containing among other things a README and a NEWS file.
For now, I will be using the following very minimalistic code:

data <- list(Package = "My STUDY", 
             Version = NULL, 
             InitialBullet = "Initial version")
usethis::use_template("NEWS.md", data = data, open = TRUE)