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

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

[Angelo Arrifano]

Hello all,

[Speaking as user] I find myself many times stumbling through package
ChangeLogs to see what is new/changed after a emerge -u world. As some
of you might agree, this is time consuming.

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? Most of packages have a somewhat standard place for it in the
source tree, so I guess a default pkg_changelog function could, in
theory, be implemented.

This function could be then called at user request by means of e.g.
emerge --showchangelog <atom> or at the end of emerge update (controlled
through a FEATURES="show-changelog" or something).

I know we are all busy with a lot of things and I know what Gentoo don't
really need right now is more cruft in the ebuilds (just think on QA!).

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

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

[William Hubbs]

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On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 04:16:05PM +0100, Angelo Arrifano wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> [Speaking as user] I find myself many times stumbling through package
> ChangeLogs to see what is new/changed after a emerge -u world. As some
> of you might agree, this is time consuming.
> 
> 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? Most of packages have a somewhat standard place for it in the
> source tree, so I guess a default pkg_changelog function could, in
> theory, be implemented.
> 
> This function could be then called at user request by means of e.g.
> emerge --showchangelog <atom> or at the end of emerge update (controlled
> through a FEATURES="show-changelog" or something).
 
 Actually there is already an option for emerge to show the changelogs
 of packages that will be upgraded.  Take a look at the --changelog
 option for emerge.  It can be used along with --pretend to show you the
 changelogs of packages that will be upgraded.

 Thanks,

 William


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

[Angelo Arrifano]

On Sex, 2010-03-12 at 09:33 -0600, William Hubbs wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 04:16:05PM +0100, Angelo Arrifano wrote:
> > Hello all,
> > 
> > [Speaking as user] I find myself many times stumbling through package
> > ChangeLogs to see what is new/changed after a emerge -u world. As some
> > of you might agree, this is time consuming.
> > 
> > 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? Most of packages have a somewhat standard place for it in the
> > source tree, so I guess a default pkg_changelog function could, in
> > theory, be implemented.
> > 
> > This function could be then called at user request by means of e.g.
> > emerge --showchangelog <atom> or at the end of emerge update (controlled
> > through a FEATURES="show-changelog" or something).
>  
>  Actually there is already an option for emerge to show the changelogs
>  of packages that will be upgraded.  Take a look at the --changelog
>  option for emerge.  It can be used along with --pretend to show you the
>  changelogs of packages that will be upgraded.

For a moment, you really tricked me into believing I've been missing
this feature. Specially by reading man emerge:
"This will show the ChangeLog entries for all the packages"
              btw: shouldn't it read "ebuilds" here? /\

What I meant originally was to show the ChangeLog of the package
(ChangeLog inside source tree), not the ebuild ChangeLog.
> 
>  Thanks,
> 
>  William
> 

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

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

[William Hubbs]

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On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 04:51:02PM +0100, Angelo Arrifano wrote:
> On Sex, 2010-03-12 at 09:33 -0600, William Hubbs wrote:
> > On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 04:16:05PM +0100, Angelo Arrifano wrote:
> > > Hello all,
> > > 
> > > [Speaking as user] I find myself many times stumbling through package
> > > ChangeLogs to see what is new/changed after a emerge -u world. As some
> > > of you might agree, this is time consuming.
> > > 
> > > 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? Most of packages have a somewhat standard place for it in the
> > > source tree, so I guess a default pkg_changelog function could, in
> > > theory, be implemented.
> > > 
> > > This function could be then called at user request by means of e.g.
> > > emerge --showchangelog <atom> or at the end of emerge update (controlled
> > > through a FEATURES="show-changelog" or something).
> >  
> >  Actually there is already an option for emerge to show the changelogs
> >  of packages that will be upgraded.  Take a look at the --changelog
> >  option for emerge.  It can be used along with --pretend to show you the
> >  changelogs of packages that will be upgraded.
> 
> For a moment, you really tricked me into believing I've been missing
> this feature. Specially by reading man emerge:
> "This will show the ChangeLog entries for all the packages"
>               btw: shouldn't it read "ebuilds" here? /\

To me, if you change that wording to "ebuilds", you mean there will be a
separate changelog for each *.ebuild file, so I would disagree with this
change.

> What I meant originally was to show the ChangeLog of the package
> (ChangeLog inside source tree), not the ebuild ChangeLog.

Not all upstreams provide changelogs (take a look at openrc as an
example), so I'm not sure we could do this.  Also, if we did, which file
should we show (ChangeLog, NEWS, README ?) and how much of the file
should we show?

I'm not sure that there is an easy way to implement something like this.

William


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

[Matti Bickel]

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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?

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.

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.


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

[Jeremy Olexa]

On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:59:58 +0100, Matti Bickel <mabi@gentoo.org> wrote:

> 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.

There is an optional <changelog> tag in metadata.xml.

"Should contain a URL where the location of the upstream changelog can be
found. The URL must be version independent and must point to a changelog
which is only updated on new releases of the corresponding package. (This
also implies that one can link to an automatically updated changelog in
case of vcs snapshots only.) "

http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/handbook/handbook.xml?part=2&chap=4#doc_chap2

-Jeremy

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

[Matti Bickel]

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Jeremy Olexa wrote:
> There is an optional <changelog> tag in metadata.xml.

Good. Seems i'm not the first who thought about that ;)
Yeah, maybe we can get the package managers to display the URLs
corresponding to the atoms to be installed/updated when given a flag.
But maybe that already exists, i haven't had a look in a while.


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

[Angelo Arrifano]

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