Re: Bug#317430: ITP: apt-history -- logs the changes when installing

[David Pashley <david@davidpashley.com>]

On Jul 09, 2005 at 12:22, Nico Golde praised the llamas by saying:
> Hallo David,
> 
> * David Pashley <david@davidpashley.com> [2005-07-09 13:20]:
> > On Jul 09, 2005 at 12:12, Nico Golde praised the llamas by saying:
> > > > Coreutils is required. Why is the ability to do something without it an
> > > > advantage?
> > > 
> > > You can do almost every thing with with tools like, grep,
> > > sed, awk etc. but in my opinion this should be so easy as
> > > possible to everyone. Not everybody is familiar with grep
> > > etc. but apt-history show should be no problem.
> > > 
> > > Regards Nico
> > 
> > function apt-history () {
> >    grep " $1 " /var/log/dpkg.log
> > }
> 
> That depends of the knowledge of shell functions.
> Please download the package and test it before you judge.
> If you then think that the package is overload I close the
> bug.
> Thanks Nico

The script hooks into DPkg::Post-Invoke and parses the status database
and records the same information that the dpkg.log stores. Basically you
end up with the information twice. You would be better off parsing
dpkg.log. I think you should file a wishlist bug against dpkg to include
it in that package. It isn't worth creating a package just for a 178
line python script.

-- 
David Pashley
david@davidpashley.com
Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione.