How do you keep track of software changelogs?

mooddha · 2011-11-02 15:50:07

I love how I always get something new with Arch, and love to read the changelog of new software versions.

Ubuntu has the list of changes for each software upgrade on their upgrade app (when you select the package), wonder if there is a tool or way to know what changed on a package on Pacman/Aur (yaourt).

How do you guys keed track of changelogs?

karol · 2011-11-02 15:57:56

There's 'pacman -Qc' but very few packages provide changelogs

[karol@black ~]$ pacman -Qc htop
2011-10-19  Andrea Scarpino <andrea@archlinux.org>
    * Enable cgroup support (FS#26155)
    * Add lsof and strace optional depends (FS#25778)
    * Fix crash when column is less than 40 (closes FS#25823)

2011-05-17  Angel Velasquez <angvp@archlinux.org>
	* Added patch to fix --sort-key (closes FS#23224)

2009-09-21  Eric Belanger  <eric@archlinux.org>

	* htop 0.8.3-1
	* Upstream update
	* Built with vserver and openvz support (close FS#12755)

2008-12-09  Alexander Fehr  <pizzapunk gmail com>

	* htop-0.8.1-1:
	* New upstream release
	* New maintainer
	* Added patch to fix FS#12235
	* Enabled Unicode support
	* Added ChangeLog

because said changelogs have to be manually provided by the packagers ;P

You can use the git / svn to view pretty detailed logs: http://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/ … org-server

mooddha · 2011-11-02 17:16:06

Thanks! That helps. Also found: http://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/ … s.git/log/

Wish there was a central website with all open source changelogs, could be useful for the curious like me.

karol · 2011-11-05 04:17:09

mooddha wrote:

Wish there was a central website with all open source changelogs, could be useful for the curious like me.

Updating that website would be a full-time job and then some :-)

Last edited by karol (2011-11-05 04:17:48)

lolilolicon · 2011-11-05 04:26:53

You can often find changelogs at freshmeat (now freecode.com).
Noteworthy changes to the packaging will be in the post-upgrade messages and possibly news.

It would be nice if developers could mark some git commits as changelog-worthy, so when releasing a new version a brief changelog would be generated automatically...

Last edited by lolilolicon (2011-11-05 04:27:51)

karol · 2011-11-05 04:36:40

lolilolicon wrote:

You can often find changelogs at freshmeat (now freecode.com).

http://sourcewell.berlios.de/index.php? … 2d2b7f5e1c has links to changelogs provided by upstream.

lolilolicon wrote:

It would be nice if developers could mark some git commits as changelog-worthy, so when releasing a new version a brief changelog would be generated automatically...

Nice idea but it could also be the job of a person responsible for the documentation side: guides, wiki etc.

mooddha · 2011-11-05 04:43:57

karol wrote:

mooddha wrote:
Wish there was a central website with all open source changelogs, could be useful for the curious like me.
Updating that website would be a full-time job and then some :-)

Yeah with github that could be implemented with Post-Receive Hooks.

Wonder if enough people would be interested in such a site, to work on it on my free time.

karol · 2011-11-05 04:55:55

A lot would depend on how the devs label their commits.

Update summaries (shortlogs?) often look like this:
http://freecode.com/projects/virtualbox

4.1.6 04 Nov 2011 18:22
Release Notes: Various minor bugs were fixed.
4.1.4 04 Oct 2011 15:51
Release Notes: Many minor bugs were fixed.
4.1.2 16 Aug 2011 07:55
Release Notes: Several minor bugs were fixed.

Thankfully the changelog is more detailed https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog

Awebb · 2011-11-05 10:17:34

If I care for the changelog, I punch "pacman -Qi [packagename]", click on the upstream URL and there I am. Sometimes it's real work, htop for exampe does not have a changelog on the website, you have to fetch the tarball (or browse the svn trunk). I once tried to write a script that fetches all the changelogs for me every update, but since there is no normal way of storing those logs, I gave up.

karol · 2011-11-05 10:21:57

Awebb wrote:

htop for exampe does not have a changelog on the website, you have to fetch the tarball (or browse the svn trunk)

htop is one of the packages that provides its changelog via pacman:

[karol@black ~]$ pacman -Qc htop
2011-10-19  Andrea Scarpino <andrea@archlinux.org>
    * Enable cgroup support (FS#26155)
    * Add lsof and strace optional depends (FS#25778)
    * Fix crash when column is less than 40 (closes FS#25823)

2011-05-17  Angel Velasquez <angvp@archlinux.org>
	* Added patch to fix --sort-key (closes FS#23224)

2009-09-21  Eric Belanger  <eric@archlinux.org>

	* htop 0.8.3-1
	* Upstream update
	* Built with vserver and openvz support (close FS#12755)

2008-12-09  Alexander Fehr  <pizzapunk gmail com>

	* htop-0.8.1-1:
	* New upstream release
	* New maintainer
	* Added patch to fix FS#12235
	* Enabled Unicode support
	* Added ChangeLog

Last edited by karol (2011-11-05 10:22:17)

Arch Linux

#1 2011-11-02 15:50:07

How do you keep track of software changelogs?

#2 2011-11-02 15:57:56

Re: How do you keep track of software changelogs?

#3 2011-11-02 17:16:06

Re: How do you keep track of software changelogs?

#4 2011-11-05 04:17:09

Re: How do you keep track of software changelogs?

#5 2011-11-05 04:26:53

Re: How do you keep track of software changelogs?

#6 2011-11-05 04:36:40

Re: How do you keep track of software changelogs?

#7 2011-11-05 04:43:57

Re: How do you keep track of software changelogs?

#8 2011-11-05 04:55:55

Re: How do you keep track of software changelogs?

#9 2011-11-05 10:17:34

Re: How do you keep track of software changelogs?

#10 2011-11-05 10:21:57

Re: How do you keep track of software changelogs?

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