[Mageia-discuss] Unhelpful update changelogs

Claire Robinson eeeemail at gmail.com
Wed Jan 4 19:46:40 CET 2012


On 04/01/12 18:12, Wolfgang Bornath wrote:
> 2012/1/4 Claire Robinson<eeeemail at gmail.com>:
>> On 04/01/12 17:04, Antoine Pitrou wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> Not sure I'm missing something, but when there's a software upgrade
>>> available (either in rpmdrake, or in the update manager), say today's
>>> Pidgin:
>>>
>>>          Version : 2.10.1-1.mga1
>>>          Version actuellement installée : 2.10.0-1.1.mga1
>>>
>>> the changelog doesn't display specifically the changes for that update:
>>>
>>>         * dim. 11 déc. 2011 13:00:00 CET fwang<fwang>    2.10.1-1.mga1
>>>
>>>          + Revision: 180554
>>>          - new version 2.10.1
>>>            fix CVE-2011-3594: UTF-8 validating incoming messages before
>>>           passing them to glib or libpurple Fix a memory leak when
>>>           admitting UTF-8 text with a non-UTF-8 primary encoding Fix
>>>           crashes and memory leaks when receiving malformed voice and
>>>           video requests
>>>            + dmorgan<dmorgan>
>>>              - New version 2.10.0
>>>
>>>          * mar. 29 mars 2011 14:00:00 CEST dams<dams>    2.7.11-1.mga1
>>>          [etc.]
>>>
>>> How am I supposed to know what changed between 2.10.0-1.1.mga1 (the
>>> installed version) and 2.10.1-1.mga1 (the proposed upgrade)? This
>>> happens with many/most packages, btw, not just Pidgin.
>>>
>>> (would be useful, wouldn't it ? :-))
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>>
>>> Antoine.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> There is a more detailed advisory written for each update but it currently
>> isn't shown in MageiaUpdate.
>>
>> You can subscribe to the Updates Announce mailing list
>
> This is surely an option for the experienced user, as are the other
> options you show.
>
> But what about the average (even unexperienced or new) users? You
> would not suggest to them to join a mailing list to be able to know
> what an update of a package will change in his system? Imagine the
> poor guy, getting 20+ packages for update and now trying to find them
> one by one in the mailing list. This way you educate them to stop
> caring about changes, just do the update.
>
> OTOH if the updates are displayed by the update system in order by
> their reason for update (security first, then bug fix, then version
> upgrade (which we seldomly do)) and a click on the package reveils the
> details, you will educate them to become curious and interested -
> can't remember which distro I saw that, maybe suse or ubuntu.
>
> I know that this means work, it's a reasonable suggestion nevertheless.
>

I very much agree with you Wolfgang, as Manuel pointed out there is a 
bug to do just that.

There is nothing I can personally do to make the necessary changes so I 
was attempting to answer the question that was asked. That would be 
something you'd have to take up on the dev mailing list!

Claire


More information about the Mageia-discuss mailing list