Re: upgrading only urgency=high packages

[Matt Zimmerman <mdz@debian.org>]

On Tue, May 01, 2001 at 02:10:32PM -0500, Gordon Sadler wrote:

> On Tue, May 01, 2001 at 02:44:21PM -0400, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > 
> > I had an idea (and a working script) to extract changelogs from source
> > packages and insert them into a SQL database.  My original intention was to
> > allow apt-listchanges to display changelogs for packages before downloading
> > them, but such a database would also allow for queries like this.  It would
> > also allow the CGI changelog viewer to work again.
> > 
> > If the daily lintian runs start up again, this script could easily be run
> > when a source package is unpacked, to keep the database up-to-date as new
> > packages come into the archive.
> > 
> You might look at another idea. When katie/dinstall runs it has to parse the
> .changes file. This includes both the urgency info and the changelog relevant
> to the current upload.

I did consider this approach:

1. Almost always, the .changes file only contains the changes from the most
   recent upload.  If multiple versions are created between uploads, the
   maintainer must remember to tell dpkg-genchanges about it.  Even if
   the maintainer does this, dpkg-parsechangelog silently loses some of the
   information in the changelog (bug #95579).

2. Changelogs from before the system was implemented would need to be imported
   somehow, so a program like the one I outlined would have to exist anyway.

A system which imports the whole changelog from each source upload would
converge quickly to contain complete information of the changelogs from the
entire archive, and correct any missed uploads or incorrect information as a
natural part of the ongoing process.

-- 
 - mdz