Re: Debian i386 architecture now requires a 686-class processor
On Wed, May 11, 2016 at 01:54:04PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> If someone has time and willingness, reviewing the contents of NEWS.Debian
> across all packages for the stable -> testing delta before the release
> sounds like a very useful thing to do.
>From what I've seen, this is very close to our problem with Recommends: --
those pointless NEWS.Debian _do_ make sense "locally" -- for a direct user
of the package in question. If you're, say, coding something with a
library, you're interested when that library changed its API in an
incompatible way. On the other hand, if you merely use something that
depends on the library, you couldn't care less.
> A great volunteer task to help with the release!
I'm afraid we'd need to come up with some guidelines first, especially with
the above issue in mind.
You can for start with packages you have installed:
zless /usr/share/doc/*/NEWS.Debian*
adequate
only for a direct user
alsa-utils
only for a direct user
amd64-microcode
niche news
apt
probably valid
apt-listchanges
sneakily worded "won't work in common situations"
autoconf
only for a direct user (API changes)
btrbk
valid -- everyone needs to rewrite their configs
ca-certificates
spam that belongs in the changelog
ccache
not relevant (old data will silently expire anyway)
chrony
valid. Multiple entries, of varying relevance.
llvm-*
changelog material
coreutils
niche news
cron
niche news
curl
spam
d-conf
only for a direct user
dctrl-tools
spam (apt does this 100% transparently)
debian-keyring
very niche news
devscripts
minor behaviour change
dirmngr
only for a direct user
docbook-xsl
speculation about future changes...
doomsday
documenting a bug (one that's easy to fix with some debugging)
ceve
niche ever for a direct user
dosfstools
documents a likely breakage, not interesting for a non-user
exim4
relevant for an admin, spam for those who don't know what a MTA is
exo
a restart-on-upgrade quirk
findutils
niche news
fonts-vlgothic
file rename, 99.9% users use it via fontconfig anyway...
wine
valid
gconf
a restart-on-upgrade quirk
[here I got bored]
As you can see, most of the news are relevant only for an immediate user
while being utterly pointless for those who installed package X only via
a dependency. But, how do you tell them apart? What about the case you
both use X directly and as a dependency?
And it needs to be stressed: being relevant only for an immediate users
means the news is still _relevant_ for them.
--
How to exploit the Bible for weight loss:
Pr28:25: he that putteth his trust in the ʟᴏʀᴅ shall be made fat.
Reply to: