Unhelpful update descriptions

[Debarshi Ray]

> unlike other major distros, other updates have less helpful
> descriptions:
> 
> * "Update to latest upstream version"
> * "No update information available"
> * "Here is where you give an explanation of your update. Here is where
> you give an explanation of your update."
> 
> Perhaps the update policy should have a guideline on the minimum amount

Or maybe the question should be: "should we be pushing this many
updates for stable releases?" I was running Fedora 17 on a laptop till
a couple weeks back and I kept getting nagged by PackageKit every
other evening. Atleast twice a week.

A meaningful update message makes sense if we want each user to read
them through. And if you want each user to do so, then you better
write a %changelog that is much more understandable than the upstream
ChangeLog because every random user will not be able to make sense of
the jargon. I am sure most developers won't be able to understand,
unless they are initimately familiar with the project. So you will
have to spend significant time writing the text.

I would suggest that we keep updates to a minimum, that we audit them
so that random version bumps don't get pushed to stable releases, and
we ship them in time based batches (eg., monthly or bi-monthly,
etc.). Once we do that we will be able to ensure that they are of
sufficient quality.

At that point one will not want to read the %changelog for each
package to satisfy herself of the need to update it. You get batches
of well tested updates at specified intervals of time, and you just
apply them without getting annoyed or being suspicious.

I think it would be a much better use of our time to audit and test
updates than writing %changelogs that can be understood by laymen.


Cheers,
Debarshi


-- 
If computers are going to revolutionize education, then steam engines and cars
and electricity would have done it too.  -- Arjun Shankar
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 834 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/attachments/20130313/fb24214c/attachment.sig>