On Tue, 24 Feb 2009, Juergen Weigert wrote:
On Feb 24, 09 17:28:53 +0100, Richard Guenther wrote:
On Tue, 24 Feb 2009, Juergen Weigert wrote:
On Feb 24, 09 16:55:27 +0100, anicka@suse.cz wrote:
Hello!
I would like to discuss here one aspect of our changelog policy.
Unlike other distributions, we have an unusual rule for our RPM changelogs (.changes file): when updating to the new version, we must process an upstream changelog and copy the most important things to RPM changelog. I would like to discuss this policy and its problems and benefits.
I completely agree with Anicka.
$ rpm -q --changelog is a useful tool for *really* comparing packages. Often the pakage version number is unchanged, but an important patch was added. In this case, our changelog is the only source of information.
For version updates, the full upstream changelog is relevant. Shortening to a 10 line excerpt may cut away the one bit of information that a user wanted to know.
I'd suggest to allow a URL-reference to the upstream changelog as replacement for the excerpt.
I don't agree with you at all. In the rpm changelog 'Update to new upstream version 1.2.3' is short and enough. If a packager adds local patches this needs to be (and is) mentioned in the rpm changelog.
I did not mean to say that the full upstream changelog should be in our changelog. My point is that an excerpt is dubious, as it is both too noisy and too crippled. If we can agree that simply stating the version-number is good enough, fine with me. Although a pointer to upstream would still be no harm.
What I would like to see (and I see we are atm pretty bad at it) is to enforce a basic set of documentation for each package that is put in /usr/share/doc/packages/$NAME. In this place there belongs 1) license information (for legal reasons even), 2) upstream provided README / NEWS / ChangeLog (which one of those are relevant or even useful varies heavily from package to package, so it's up to the maintainer to choose). 3) if there is SUSE specific modifications, like configuration changes, there should be a README.SUSE file.
This requires to have the package installed first. I'd like to give the user as much information as possible before he installs.
Well. I think the version number together with the package
description is enough. Of course with a custom tool (zypper?) it
should be easy to extract /usr/doc/packages/$NAME/$whatever and
display it without installing the package. Of course you need
to download it first - but this is needed for the changelog anyway.
Richard.
--
Richard Guenther