[Mageia-discuss] Unhelpful update changelogs

[Florian Hubold]

Am 04.01.2012 19:12, schrieb Wolfgang Bornath:
> 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.
>
Maybe you missed Manuel's second mail, it's just that the infrastructure
for displaying the advisory and the type of update (which worked the way
you describe it on Mandriva, differing between security, bugfix and pure
version update, color-coded in red, yellow and green in the update applet, IIRC)
is still missing Please see: https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2223