Simon Stelling wrote:
Alec Joseph Warner wrote:
to get you upgrade information. While I can see a great benefit in
putting important information into the changelog, I really can't see why
portage should provide functions to read a changelog, when nearly all
packages provide the same information on their homepages.
Because the functionality already exists and is in stable portage?
Because some developers maintain system critical packages that can cause
large amounts of breakage and get complaints from users when things
break? Gentoo is a distribution and there is some responsibility to
provide users upgrade paths when packages switch versions. Gentoo isn't
just portage, IMHO.
Note, we're talking about upstream's changelog, not portage's one. There
is no feature to read upstream's changelog through portage *before*
merging it. I agree that Gentoo is more than Portage, and it
definitively should provide upgrade paths where necessary, but not by
implementing such a feature. It's far easier to stick a note into the
Changelog/post_pkg() saying "There were major changes in this release,
please carefully read the changelog at http://www.upstream.org/.";
A. In some instances, those notes never show up in the changelog
B. pkg_postinst() doesn't cut it, because the damage is already done in
that phase.
I would be very supportive of A. Just a note in the gentoo changelog
saying Warning: this upgrade could cause problems, see the project
homepage for details.
Right now it is not always possible to destinguish between a safe
upgrade and one that the developers know is dangerous. I am simply
advocating a standard string in the changelog ( so that it's grep-able )
warning the user about potential problems. No long speeches in the
changelog about it.
Regards,
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