Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: GLEP 42 (Was: Getting Important Updates To Users)

[Michiel de Bruijne]

On Saturday 05 November 2005 06:08, Jason Stubbs wrote:
> Why does `emerge --changelog` not suffice for package-specific news?

>From a user/sys.admin point of view let me give you an example;

I maintain quite a lot Gentoo-systems. For me it's impossible to read _every_ 
changelog for minor release changes. For example not so long ago Apache was 
upgraded from 2.0.54-r15 to 2.0.54-r31. For me as a user/sys.admin based on 
versionnumbers this is a minor change. However the changes were rather 
extensive (e.g. reorganization of conf.files). 

When these changes occur I want to be informed _before_ I start emerge and I 
think that this information should be _pushed_ to users/sys.admins instead of 
_pulled_ from external sources (forums, website, mailinglist, etc. or 
changelogs).

If changelogs could be extended with a priority flag and emerge would notify 
me when a high priority changelog is applicable to my system then this would 
be just fine for me. Basically all I want is;

Notification that new relevant news items will be displayed via the
``emerge`` tool in a similar way to the existing "configuration files need
updating" messages:

::

    * Important: 3 config files in /etc need updating.
    * Type emerge --help config to learn how to update config files.

    * Important: there are 2 security advisories released for installed 
packages.
    * Type emerge --security to see the details.

    * Important: there are 5 unread news items.
    * Type emerge --help news to learn how to read news files.

If this is possible by extending the changelog I'm a happy users/sys.admin. I 
don't care if I need to type emerge --news or emerge --changelog as long the 
information is pushed.


Disclaimer; I'm not 100% sure that the versionnumbers from Apache mentioned 
above are exact the real world examples, but you get the idea.

Regards,

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