Release/1.2 0 seasonal and exact date features

[QSparks]

Summary

This PR is for the upcoming 1.2-0 release of our climdex.pcic package. The release introduces new features, including the ability to calculate climate indices for meteorological seasons and the addition of exact dates being optionally returned for climate indices. It also includes additional testing for the new features and an automated R CMD check process using GitHub Actions.

1.2-0 Release Notes

This release includes the following Pull Requests, which detail the specific changes and discussions around these new features:

• Seasonal Climate Indices Calculation: #28
• GitHub Actions Workflow: #30
• Exact Dates for Climate Indices: #31

  Changelog Updates

  The changes included in this release are documented in the CHANGELOG. MAJOR CHANGES:

• Seasonal Climate Indices Calculation (API CHANGE)
• Exact Dates for Climate Indices (API CHANGE)

MINOR CHANGES:

• Updated and Expanded Testing
• Automated Package Checking

In addition to the CHANGELOG updates, the minor version has been incremented in the DESCRIPTION

[QSparks]

Hi all,

PRs #28, #30, and #31 have been merged into master, and I've rebased this branch to show only changes to the DESCRIPTION and changelog. This is the final step before the modular refactoring in PR #36.

When someone has a moment, a review would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

[QSparks]

Q: Is the format of CHANGELOG and DESCRIPTION mandated by the "R powers", or could you (if you wanted) use Markdown to format these?

Great Question! The DESCRIPTION file must adhere to a specific Debian Control File format. CHANGELOG is ignored by R, though the convention is to follow the GNU standards. We aren’t following this convention and could benefit from reworking the changelog into a NEWS.md. NEWS files are generally preferred and can be conveniently displayed as formatted text using R utils news() function.