Bug#646622: Changelog for new upstream release should include summary of upstream changelog

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

retitle 646622 apt-listchanges: please parse upstream changelog, too (perhaps with packages' help)
reassign 646622 apt-listchanges 2.85.8
quit

Hi,

Nemo Inis wrote:

> I have a suggestion from an end-user point of view:
>
> All too often when checking incoming updates (in Synaptic or other tools) the
> Debian changelog includes a mere mention "new upstream release".
[...]
> But for the convenience of the end-user, it would be nice
> if a summary of the upstream's changelog would be included too (like new
> features, UI changes, backward compatibility problems, etc..) This would avoid
> having to go hunt for it on every single package, and would make the whole
> process more user-friendly.

The package you are looking for is debian-policy.  But I am going to
assign this report to apt-listchanges instead --- if apt-listchanges
could parse upstream changelogs (with maintainer help), then there
would be no need for a summary in the Debian changelog except when a
particularly notable upstream change has appeared.

I can imagine two different ways to do that:

 A. Encourage packagers to provide a metadata file with the following
    information:

	format: the upstream changelog format.  The value is the name
	of a changelog parsing helper fulfilling the
	dpkg-parsechangelog interface, like the argument to
	"dpkg-parsechangelog -F"

	dversionmangle: a rule to map from the upstream component of
	the Debian version to an upstream version number, just like in
	uscan's "debian/watch" file.

    Or:

 B. Maintain state out-of-band to indicate how much of the upstream
    changelog has been read.  E.g., keep the top few lines read and
    total number of lines, and for each new version we look for lines
    similar to those lines the indicated number of lines from the end
    of the file to decide where the new changelog entries stop.

Sane?

Thanks and hope that helps,
Jonathan