Lack of update information

[Panu Matilainen]

On Mon, 26 Jan 2009, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>
> Is rpm still this other-worldly tool which we're not allowed to
> change, even for blindingly obvious stuff like needing an identical
> %clean section in every RPM in the world?

Heh, too bad names like "Plan-9" and "alien" are already taken ;)

Sure we can and do change rpm, but changes in rpm world tend to take ages 
to get actually deployed & used. Yes, even in Fedora.

> Anyway, _if_ we are allowed to change rpm, then we could have
>
>  %doc(changelog) ChangeLog
>
> which would be the upstream changelog, and other tools could pull this
> out and display it to end users to their hearts' content.
>
> And it would involve only minimal extra effort for packagers.

But what exactly would that solve? The ChangeLog file would be in the rpm 
payload, so the contents are only accessible after the package has already 
been installed. The intended audience here seems to be "end users", to 
whom the raw upstream SCM changelogs aren't often that useful. Somebody 
has to actually write the nice end-user friendly executive summaries for 
packages, they unfortunately don't come to existence by wishing :)

If it's the Bodhi update messages we're primarily talking about here, then 
how about just adding an optional field for a link to the upstream release 
notes/summary for the upstreams that happen to provide nice end-user 
friendly release summaries?

 	- Panu -