Re: Bits from the SRM

[Joe Buck <Joe.Buck@synopsys.com>]

Hi,

I've had a consistent problem over the years with the announcements that
are sent out for updates to the stable distribution, one that should be
easily correctable.

The messages are written as if it is assumed that people don't apply security
updates.  It is typical that an update to stable changes 30 packages, but
27 of those changes do nothing to a system that has security.debian.org in
the apt sources.list.  What this means is that the vast majority of
readers have to carefully scan and parse the messages to extract the
small number of changes that will actually do something to their system,
as opposed to security updates that have already been applied, or else
completely ignore the message and just see what apt-get dist-upgrade
wants to do.

The solution is obvious: please include a list (ideally at the beginning)
of changed packages in the release that were not previously available from
security.debian.org.  In most cases this will be a very small list.

Thanks.