[Mageia-discuss] Unhelpful update changelogs

Wolfgang Bornath molch.b at googlemail.com
Wed Jan 4 19:12:49 CET 2012


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.

-- 
wobo


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