Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] ebuild function to show package changelog

[Angelo Arrifano <miknix@gentoo.org>]

On Sex, 2010-03-12 at 17:59 +0100, Matti Bickel wrote: 
> Angelo Arrifano wrote:
> > What do you people think on a new pkg_changelog function that would
> > instruct the ebuild how to retrieve this kind of information from the
> > package?
> 
> No, please don't. I'm okay with it if your mean "at the end of
> emerge -u <atom>", but wouldn't it be pointless to see what changed
> *after* you just installed the thing?

Not pointless. If people don't read package changelogs/releasenotes,
then it is highly probable they miss new features in the packages. 
> 
> The reason i'm against it is the complexity involved. You need to pull
> down the source (up to hunderts of megabytes for openoffice), run
> src_unpack and eventually src_configure phases. Then you need to know
> where to look and what to show.

A ChangeLog in the root of the source dir. is almost mandatory in autotools
distributions. Despite the existence of a somewhat standard format for ChangeLogs,
it is not enforced leaving the need to parse all the crap they through at us.
> 
> But i agree it's cool to know what i will gain from my daily emerge run.
> 
> As an alternative, let the ebuild provide a variable that points to
> upstreams online Changelog or something, so you as a human can go parse
> it yourself. But then you could also just take the HOMEPAGE variable
> that's already there.
> 

As Jeremy pointed out:
"There is an optional <changelog> tag in metadata.xml."

That really looks like a better solution and it is something I might
start putting on the packages I maintain.

-- 
Angelo Arrifano AKA MiKNiX
Gentoo Embedded/OMAP850 Developer
Linwizard Developer
http://www.gentoo.org/~miknix
http://miknix.homelinux.com