Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Changelogs

[Alec Joseph Warner]

Simon Stelling wrote:
> Alec Joseph Warner wrote:
>
>>>to get you upgrade information. While I can see a great benefit in
>>>putting important information into the changelog, I really can't see why
>>>portage should provide functions to read a changelog, when nearly all
>>>packages provide the same information on their homepages.
>>
>> Because the functionality already exists and is in stable portage?
>>Because some developers maintain system critical packages that can cause
>>large amounts of breakage and get complaints from users when things
>>break?  Gentoo is a distribution and there is some responsibility to
>>provide users upgrade paths when packages switch versions.  Gentoo isn't
>>just portage, IMHO.
>
>
> Note, we're talking about upstream's changelog, not portage's one. There
> is no feature to read upstream's changelog through portage *before*
> merging it. I agree that Gentoo is more than Portage, and it
> definitively should provide upgrade paths where necessary, but not by
> implementing such a feature. It's far easier to stick a note into the
> Changelog/post_pkg() saying "There were major changes in this release,
> please carefully read the changelog at http://www.upstream.org/."
>
A.  In some instances, those notes never show up in the changelog
B.  pkg_postinst() doesn't cut it, because the damage is already done in 
that phase.

I would be very supportive of A.  Just a note in the gentoo changelog 
saying Warning: this upgrade could cause problems, see the project 
homepage for details.

Right now it is not always possible to destinguish between a safe 
upgrade and one that the developers know is dangerous.  I am simply 
advocating a standard string in the changelog ( so that it's grep-able ) 
warning the user about potential problems.  No long speeches in the 
changelog about it.

> Regards,
>
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