More unhelpful update descriptions

[Till Maas]

On Sat, Jun 29, 2013 at 01:07:29PM -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:

> The upstream, RPM or git changelog is never a good update description.
> 
> An update description should be a very clear high-level description
> of what the update does. The audience is a normal end-user who has
> 300 updates to apply and wants to know what they do. This person is
> not going to spend six hours reading changelogs.
> 
> "This update simply fixes the bugs listed" is an okay description -
> it tells the reader what they need to know and re-assures them that
> the update doesn't do anything *else*. Of course, if it does, you
> need to explain that: "This update includes a new upstream release
> which fixes the bugs listed. You can find other changes in the
> upstream description at http://www.blahblah.foo".

For this update description, no human intervention is required, because
it can be created automatically. If the person reading the notice wants
to know what the update does, there is no way around reading changelogs,
because they contain this information. If he or she just wants some
comforting words, then the GUI or update framework can generate them
just automatically.

> I can't personally conceive of a case in which it would make sense
> to simply have some kind of changelog as the update description.
> That is not what the description is for.

I only read update changelogs if I want to provide karma and am
wondering if there is anything special that I should test, therefore I
do not see any value at all in the update description. Maybe more
examples of good update description would help.

Regards
Till