Re: debian/NEWS.Debian / apt-listchanges woes

[Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd@debian.org>]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for the quick reply.

On 12 March 2005 at 17:04, Martin Michlmayr wrote:
| * Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd@debian.org> [2005-03-12 10:45]:
| > So the r-gnome binary package becomes an empty shell, and I would like to
| > signal that via a NEWS file (as opposed to a debconf message).  However, in
| > my tests, the NEWS file never got displayed by apt-listchanges.
| 
| apt-listchanges is only invoked when you use apt-get to install the
| package.  Maybe you were using dpkg to test the upgrade?  (At least
| that's what I did once...).

That's a good point. Checking on what wajig(1) does behind the scenes (via
wajig -t $some_command), I see that I did indeed fall into a dpkg-being-used
trap on at least one of the two machines I installed it on.


| Also, NEWS.Debian has to be in the right format.  What does yours look
| like?

I think copied the format from some doc somewhere:

r-gnome (2.0.1.alpha.20050311-1) experimental; urgency=low

  * The experimental and incomplete Gnome UI is no longer included 
    in the upstream R sources as of the R 2.1.0 release. 
  
    Hence, this Debian package is now an empty transition package 
    which will eventually disappear.
  
    The old code for the R Gnome frontend is still available via
    svn co https://svn.r-project.org/R-packages/trunk/gnomeGUI

 -- Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd@debian.org>  Thu, 10 Mar 2005 20:21:23 -0600

Ok, so I just did the following

1) Run 'wajig reconfigure apt-listchanges' to ensure apt-listchanges shows
   everything, even on versions we've seen before
2) 'wajig purge r-gnome'
3) 'wajig install r-gnome' and verify with -t that this does use apt
   underneath. 

I do get NEWS mailed on some of my machines, but am puzzled as to why I don't
see it everywhere.

Regards, Dirk

-- 
Better to have an approximate answer to the right question than a precise 
answer to the wrong question.  --  John Tukey as quoted by John Chambers