[maemo-developers] Now *that*'s what I call a changelog...

[From: Andrew Flegg]

On 8/10/07, Daniel Stone <daniel.stone at nokia.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 10, 2007 at 01:25:45PM +0100, ext Andrew Flegg wrote:
> > With all the recent discussion about release notes and changelogs,
> > *this* is what I like to see in a changelog:
> >
> >     http://browser.garage.maemo.org/news/4/
>
> Except for the categorisation (and HTML format, instead of text), what
> you then want is essentially /usr/share/doc/*/changelog.Debian.gz.

Effectively, yes. Although I find the categorisation helpful, this
doesn't need to be done after the fact.

As had already been pointed out, there are pages which list the
variation in packages; assuming they have good changelogs, from a
Maemo point of view it should be possible to auto-generate a decent
changelog.

I'd try to do it this afternoon, but would need some more information:

  * What's the difference between the Content Comparison Table[1] and the
    Content Changes Table[2]?

  * Are these sorts of tables going to be released for future updates? (I'm
    not writing a tool for a one-off)

  * For this release, are there finally no differences between the packages
    in the IT OS and the corresponding SDK? If not, are their equivalent
    tables for the packages which make up an IT OS release?

  * What's the definitive place to get the source for a given package?

  * Where's the equivalent for the open IT OS packages which aren't part of
    Maemo[3], such as osso-rss-feed-reader?

Having a quick look at some of the random entries, however shows that
not all the debian/changelog entries have the same level of thought
that timeless has put in, for example from libconic:

  * Fixed freeing of a GError. Fixes: NB#49308.

Admittedly, if that bug was accessible the description of it could
also be pulled out into the complete changelog. Unfortunately, even
the open source components of an IT OS release are closed
developments, but this is a long rant for another day (which I don't
think we're ever going to get solved satisfactorily).

Cheers,

Andrew

[1] http://tablets-dev.nokia.com/3.2/content_comparison.html
[2] http://tablets-dev.nokia.com/3.2/content_changes.html
[3] http://maemo.org/news/view/1186118712.html

-- 
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew at bleb.org  |  http://www.bleb.org/