Arch Linux

f4hy

Member

From: Pittsburgh Pa

Registered: 2009-02-08

Posts: 55

Information about updated packages

Often when I update my system I want to know what changes have been made to a specific package. Does arch have this information somewhere? On other distros there are places you can look up what the new changes are to a package. It would be good to know if the updated package is just a new build from upstream, a change in the configuration, or a patch to fix some security flaw. For certain things like kernel updates or binutils I can get paranoid upgrading and would just like to read some change log.

It seems like the most logical places for this in my mind would be a flag to pacman when doing -Suy or perhaps information about the update on the RSS feed for new packages.

fphillips

Member

From: Austin, TX

Registered: 2009-01-24

Posts: 202

Re: Information about updated packages

Well, if the package version ends in "-1" you can surmise that it's a new upstream version, but yes, I think there is room for improvement here, as a pacman -Qc will tell you. Mostly, I think developers have enough to deal with without writing changelogs, and we may not want to put upstream commit logs in the packages, but maybe they can be pulled at will via script? At a more basic level, even classifying releases as bugfix, securityfix, or new release can be useful.

f4hy

Member

From: Pittsburgh Pa

Registered: 2009-02-08

Posts: 55

Re: Information about updated packages

Well good to know that the developers do not write such change logs so I can at least stop looking for them. The -Qc option is great for the limited packages that have changelogs, but at that point it is a bit too late. It would be nice to know what will be changed BEFORE upgrading the package. A flag to pacman to give the equivalent of -Qc but for --sync would be nice, unfortunately -c is already used :-\

bugfix/securityfix/new_version would be nice to have. Not sure where that information should go. I think the best place would be to be included in the feed http://www.archlinux.org/packages/?sort=-last_update

Snowman

Developer/Forum Fellow

From: Montreal, Canada

Registered: 2004-08-20

Posts: 5,212

Re: Information about updated packages

To check the change of a package before installing it, you can check the svn. Go at the package page in http://www.archlinux.org/packages/ and click on the "View SVN Entries" links.

You can also subcribe to the arch-commits ML: http://www.archlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/arch-commits but it has a high volume of emails.

fphillips

Member

From: Austin, TX

Registered: 2009-01-24

Posts: 202

Re: Information about updated packages

The -Qc option is great for the limited packages that have changelogs, but at that point it is a bit too late. It would be nice to know what will be changed BEFORE upgrading the package. A flag to pacman to give the equivalent of -Qc but for --sync would be nice, unfortunately -c is already used :-\

You can query packages before they are installed, you just have to point it to a file with -Qcp.

The file must be local, which means downloading it first.

[fp@oscar ~]$ pacman -Qcp `sudo pacman -Sup|grep -e ^http`
error: package "http://mirrors.gigenet.com/archlinux/core/os/i686/dhcpcd-4.0.10-1-i686.pkg.tar.gz" not found