Developers are constantly updating their packages to extend capabilities, improve performance, fix bugs and enhance documentation. These changes are introduced into the development branch of Bioconductor and released to end users every 6 months; changes are tracked using a central, publicly readable Subversion software repository, so details of all changes are fully accessible. Simultaneously, R itself is continually changing, typically around performance enhancements and increased functionality. Owing to this dynamic environment, all packages undergo a daily testing procedure. Testing is fully automated and ensures that all code examples in the package documentation, as well as further unit tests, run without error. Successful completion of the testing will result in the package being built and presented to the community.
