On lundi, 16 octobre 2017 11.19:30 h CEST Axel Braun wrote:

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Gesendet: Montag, 16. Oktober 2017 um 11:10 Uhr Von: "Michael Ströder" An: opensuse-packaging Betreff: [opensuse-packaging] .changes madness with upstream updates

HI!

Sometimes a submission of me gets declined because of changelog being too short or too long referring to this policy:

https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Creating_a_changes_file_%28RPM%29#What_go es_into_the_changelog

While the guide-lines were surely outlined with good aims I have to question the current policy of package changelogs (*.changes) regarding upstream updates. The rules are too blurry and boil down to "Do the right thing".

I don't like to provide an extract of an upstream changelog because I'm convinced that no packager is capable of extracting a really meaningful essence from an upstream changelog. Furthermore I assume that upstream developers are also lazy writing docs and the changelog would have been already shorter if still meaningful.

*See Mercurial Change Log for Details* is a common phrase I see in 'my' upstream packages. We had a lengthy discussion on this, and the developers are not willing to change this

...

So IMO the right way is to..

1. just mention upstream release and packaging changes

xor

2. add the complete changelog.

I vote for 1)!

Best Axel

Also sometimes when possible get an upstream direct link of those changes. On my side, if I see something that has to be done by the users I add it to the .changes :-) -- Bruno Friedmann Ioda-Net Sàrl www.ioda-net.ch Bareos Partner, openSUSE Member, fsfe fellowship GPG KEY : D5C9B751C4653227 irc: tigerfoot -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+owner@opensuse.org

Hi, On 10/16/2017 02:11 PM, Richard Brown wrote:

- Minimal acceptable - just mention upstream release and packaging changes - Ideal - upstream release, packaging changes and packagers "highlights" of release if the package maintainer is confident they have a meaningful understanding (I have more faith than you ;)) Depending on my time and mood I use one of these. Copy & paste of upstream changelog makes no sense especially knowing that not all upstream features can be packaged in openSUSE. For example in case of syslog-ng, JAR files necessary to build Java-based destinations are missing from openSUSE. So detailing Elasticsearch or Hadoop related changes makes no sense at all.

Bye, CzP -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+owner@opensuse.org

On 2017-10-16 12:56:24 +0000, Dominique Leuenberger / DimStar wrote:

On Mon, 2017-10-16 at 14:19 +0200, Peter Czanik wrote:

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Hi,

On 10/16/2017 02:11 PM, Richard Brown wrote:

...

- Minimal acceptable - just mention upstream release and packaging changes - Ideal - upstream release, packaging changes and packagers "highlights" of release if the package maintainer is confident they have a meaningful understanding (I have more faith than you ;))

Depending on my time and mood I use one of these. Copy & paste of upstream changelog makes no sense especially knowing that not all upstream features can be packaged in openSUSE. For example in case of syslog-ng, JAR files necessary to build Java-based destinations are missing from openSUSE. So detailing Elasticsearch or Hadoop related changes makes no sense at all.

This is actually what the guideline says you should be doing when using upstream's changelog: strip irrelevant things (Windows installer fixes? MacOSX build fix, non-openSUSE releated feature fixes).

So you do it all right - keep on doing it :) - But I agree: doing serious packaging takes time and also some understanding (I keep on telling people: don't just copy/paste the NEWS, but actually READ/Understand it... not uncommonly you find out about new build deps you might want to check, or even obsolete ones)

TBH the *understand* part is the important bit. if you submit something it would be nice if you have at least some understand of the impact of your submission. darix -- openSUSE - SUSE Linux is my linux openSUSE is good for you www.opensuse.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+owner@opensuse.org

On 2017-10-16 13:34:56 +0000, Philipp Thomas wrote:

* Dominique Leuenberger / DimStar (dimstar@opensuse.org) [20171016 14:58]:

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This is actually what the guideline says you should be doing when using upstream's changelog: strip irrelevant things (Windows installer fixes? MacOSX build fix, non-openSUSE releated feature fixes).

And sometimes you're lucky to maintain a package like coreutils that has a ChangeLog and NEWS that I often whish all other packages to have as every addition, change in behaviour or bug fix is mentioned and in case of bugs it's mentioned which release introduced that bug.

But I admit that it *is* sometimes hard to determine the importance of an entry. My rule of thumb is if it's relevant for a user of the package, not for someone that either wants to build his own packages or even change the code.

Consider this: For all packages which do not have such a nice file, we now suggest "I as a packager dont feel like doing the work, to compile the list of important changes, instead i expect that every of other contributors/users in the project goes through the hassle" Seems much more reasonable no? One person doing the work vs dozens or hundred of people having to do it over and over. darix -- openSUSE - SUSE Linux is my linux openSUSE is good for you www.opensuse.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+owner@opensuse.org

On 10/16/2017 11:10 AM, Michael Ströder wrote:

1. just mention upstream release and packaging changes

xor

2. add the complete changelog.

Sometimes the only change in version update is an entry in .changes file and upstream tarball update. Sometimes it's a little more. But in both cases the correct way to manage the .changes changelog is to put in important changes for openSUSE users in there. If you only mention packages changes and no upstream changes, then users don't know what improvements happened, if any. Upstream changes could include security fixes, CVE numbers and other things that are important to track. Ideally, the .changes files should capture all the important changes upstream has done in the release. As to what is important, that's for you to filter. *Read* upstream changelog and decide. But in every release, try to find something in addition to "New upstream version X.Y.Z" and include that in the .changes. If nothing else, it at least makes your package look well maintained ;) Cheers, Adam -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+owner@opensuse.org

On 11/08/2017 08:59 AM, Michael Ströder wrote:

1. The guidelines are too blurry to let two packagers independently produce similar results. Adding more rules to the guidelines won't help and make things rather worse.

That's on purpose. You are suppose to make a decision what is important for users of your package, and what is not important. If two packagers could independently create similar or the same results, then the process could just be automated anyway.

2. The guide lines encourage to add _incomplete_ information to .changes. A "user" reading .changes won't be able to determine whether there's enough information in there.

The point of .changes is to list important changes for the users of your package. It's subjective because it's meant to be fed into a human brain, not into another computer ;) Upstream changes could include things like "refactored module", but that's probably not important to the users of the package. It doesn't tell your users anything more than "new upstream version" anyway.

IMO it's much better to inform the user just about the upstream version without any upstream changes information. This indicates that he has to look somewhere else to get detailed information about causes of problems he might run into. Examples: - sssd provides a section "Highlights" in its change log. Fine. I usually simply copy&paste that to sssd.changes. But it's already quite lengthy and it might not be important for a "user" trying to track down issues in his *existing* deployment. This user needs information about *all* changes.

If something is broken by upstream update, then the user should file a bug report. I don't think we are expecting users to bisect upstream git repositories so they can feed us patches? As for "Highlights" section, I often do similar things for Boost or NodeJS, but even then I cut it down to only include changes that are important for openSUSE users, and I remove unrelated things like upstream's acknowledgments or upstream bug reports or commits hashes. Generally, you should not have more than 1 page of .changes describing upstream version update. But having more than 1 line is generally very desirable too. So describe upstream changes in something between maybe 5 and 50 lines? Like Executive Summary of business Financial Statements. Or like back of the book summary for a novel. Just because space is at premium, don't just throw up your hands and say "meh, can't list everything so let's not bother".

3. Following your explanation above almost always will produce too many lines added to .changes.

Therefore I consider the guidelines to be harmful, leading to false information missing the goals.

So my suggestion is to just mention: 1. upstream release 2. packaging changes 3. security fixes / CVE numbers to make some automated compliance checkers happy

CVE numbers is not just to make compliance checkers happy. *Users* are actually looking for these too! - Adam -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+owner@opensuse.org

On 09/11/2017 11:24, Bernhard M. Wiedemann wrote:

On 2017-10-16 15:44, Marcus Rueckert wrote:

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One person doing the work vs dozens or hundred of people having to do it over and over.

If upstreams would think about that, they could provide nicer summaries of changes to save that effort for packagers in various distributions (there are at least 13 distributions)

+1 I have to extract changes from git logs for some packages. Dave P -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+owner@opensuse.org

Jan Engelhardt wrote:

(So yeah, there is the emergency exit for mstroeder - always package git snapshots and just say there was no info provided ;-)

My emergency exit is not to bother with packaging stuff for general use at all. This also avoids the need to deal with your responses. Ciao, Michael.

Moin, On Nov 08, 17 08:59:25 +0100, Michael Ströder wrote: [....]

Therefore I consider the guidelines to be harmful, leading to false information missing the goals.

So my suggestion is to just mention: 1. upstream release 2. packaging changes 3. security fixes / CVE numbers to make some automated compliance checkers happy

Ciao, Michael.

Well, I think there are advantages as wella s disadvantages in the way the .changes are created, that's clear. The bad thing is - those differe depending on which group of audience you look into. And given that we ship the packages in various places and distributions, it's no teven possible to say "that's the audience we want it for". It's always a compromise - or the lesser evil. I _personally_ hate the tendency of some upstream projects to not bobther with changes any more, but just say "use gitlogs". But I am an old-fashioned guy used to good .changes files from upstream :) Businesswise, for the Enterprise releases, the changes-files are extremely important, from a customer perspective as well as from a release manager perspective. Not knowing all packages by heart, it's often the first source of information "should/need we to take this?". And no, going to the webpages/gitlogs/otherstorage of upstream for each package is not want any one would want... A good changelog explains to me also, besides what you mentioned, changes in behavior, incompatibilities, and gives me a rough outline why I would want this. Stefan -- Stefan Behlert, SUSE LINUX Release Manager Enterprise Server Maxfeldstr. 5, D-90409 Nuernberg, Germany Phone +49-911-74053-173 SUSE Linux GmbH, GF: Felix Imendörffer, Jane Smithard, Graham Norton, HRB 21284 (AG Nürnberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+owner@opensuse.org